Shades of Grey
by Sandshells
Summary: October 1981. AU - Harry has not been conceived. Lily and James are happily married, or so she tries to convince herself. But when Voldemort is defeated by a small boy named Neville Longbottom, Lily's world is shaken to its core by the unexpected arrival of an old friend. Some things, as she learns, never change. SSLE
1. Chapter 1

Night had fallen long ago, but no one had bothered to light a fire. A brisk wind whipped across the rooftops and ruffled the leaves, speaking of a coming storm. In the dark sitting room, the only light came from the neighbor's windows, throwing vague shadows onto the floor. From her seat next to the window, Lily could see the empty path leading up to the house—_of course it's empty, what did you expect?_—which she couldn't help turning to every few minutes. As if to reassure herself that it was still deserted. That no one would come in to interrupt the cozy picture of domesticity that the two of them formed. Complete with the Gryffindor scarf that she was now twisting in her hands.

She watched James's chest rise and fall as he snored. His head was thrown back against his armchair, exposing his throat. A book lay open on his lap—she wasn't sure what it was, some Quidditch manual perhaps; she was fine with anything as long as it wasn't _Wanton Witches Weekly_. The thought of this last made her smile, remembering how James had once insisted that he would rather look at her than a thousand of those witches, but the smile slipped after a few seconds. She felt strange remembering a joke shared in this very room, so long ago, when things had been so different.

With each snore, his spectacles slipped a bit further down his face. Lily surveyed him with a kind of detachedness, as though she were surveying a scientific specimen. Her mind felt blank with exhaustion. If James were to awaken and ask her a question, she felt that she would barely be able to speak—the words would have to fight their way out of her throat, like someone trying to run through water.

She ran a hand through her hair, still trying to get used to the new feel of it brushing around her cheeks, the new lightness to her head. The red locks no longer fell in a long sheet, but cut short to barely above her shoulders and curlier because of the reduced length. It was still that same fiery red, like the blazing of autumn leaves rather than flames.

She looked out the window again. The path leading up to their house extended into the street, which eventually faded into blackness, the lamplight petering out less than thirty feet from their front door. The panes in the glass window rattled with the gusting wind. Lily snuck another glance at James. Still asleep. _Fine_, she thought, and stood up slowly.

Lily walked up the stairs. Turning back again, her glance lingered on the window, to the trees outside and their branches that were beginning to turn to skeleton fingers. More leaves were falling now, but not gently or delicately—they were fluttering around crazily, as the winds whipped the trees' limbs to and fro. She could feel a sudden chill cutting into her as if a gust of wind had just crept in through the window. Shivering, she crept into bed and pulled the cover over herself. She curled up, trying to get warm. She vaguely registered her husband climbing up the stairs some indefinite time later and laying down next to her. Sometime later during the night, he rolled over and away from her, leaving her to clasp the blanket tighter around herself, hugging her body because of the cold.

* * *

The storm had passed during the night. By the time Lily awoke, the sun was already up, glaring in her eyes. She sat up groggily, feeling as if she had just lain down to sleep. She had had problems with that lately—when she lay her head down, she couldn't stop her eyes from popping open, staring into the dim corners of the room for reasons she couldn't fathom. And when she woke, it was almost a relief, in that hour when the last dreams of her sleep always reminded her of slogging through a much, recycling the most basic thoughts over and over again in a series of lethargic half-dreams until she wanted to rip off the covers and unstick herself from the dense heat of her sun-baked bed.

She wasn't sure she wanted to sleep these days, anyway. The idea sounded nice, but she also had the feeling that something was waiting for her in that darkness. She didn't know exactly what, but it had the noxious stink of a bad dream.

Some of those things that kept her awake and staring into the corners of the room were things she was familiar with, some of those words which she had heard muttered and whispered on the streets—_"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named"—"Death Eaters"—_and of course the inexhaustible variety of ways to report a disappearance or an attack or the death of a loved one. All these she was well acquainted with. But some things…she didn't know. Some things she didn't want to think about too hard, because they were much more familiar to her than those other events in the outside world. Sometimes they took the shape of the man that lay next to her at night. The man she had sworn to love to the end of her days, the man who had watched her walk down the aisle with love and admiration in his eyes, and the man that sometimes, for no reason whatsoever, made her feel cold inside.

Her gaze fell to the calendar tacked to the wall. _Oh,_ she thought dully, _it's already Halloween._ A particular turning point she had once looked forward to as a child, and later as a student at Hogwarts (although mainly for the Halloween party in that case), had slipped by her. She had once had the vague idea that she and James would cultivate a reputation in their neighborhood for handing out the best candies, but that hope had dissipated as the war grew grimmer. By the time they had moved here, no magical children went trick-or-treating anymore. It carried with it too many risks: poison, hexes, curses. Halloween was no longer a time of celebration and joy. Tonight would be like any other night—an evening spent listening to the news for more deaths, more disappearances. Because they had to. Because to not listen would be to live in the dark and imagine what was going on. She had once thought this would be worse, but the rising death tolls and news of attacks were beginning to make her question this.

Finally Lily rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Just like she would on any other day.

As she bent down to reach under the bed for her shoes, her finger brushed against something that made her pause. She groped around and extricated an old black-and-white moving photograph, covered in dust.

And froze, half-crouching on the cold floor. What she had expected to find was maybe a picture of James playing Quidditch, or of her, or maybe even of the two of them together. And for a second she had thought it was the latter, as she was in the picture—but then she saw who it was next to her. It was not James. A young Lily stood next to a thin, sallow-faced boy with lank black hair. As Lily watched, a half-playful, half-mischievous expression crossed her younger self's face, and she leaned up to kiss the boy's cheek. His scowl broke into something that might have been a smile.

_Where was this picture taken?_ she thought, trying not to look too closely at the eyes of Lily in the picture. Or of the boy. _I have no memory of this. And what on earth is it doing here?_ This sort of thing didn't belong in the house of a happily married couple, not with kisses being planted and smiles being given to awkward, unpleasant boys who called their supposed friends Mudbloods. It was an artifact, ancient, belonging to another person in another time.

_You haven't spoken to him for years. This is not him suddenly showing up in your bedroom, Lily! It's only a photograph. So stop…stop it._ She realized to her horror that tears had started in her eyes. And she couldn't stop looking at the photograph. Watching the poor stupid children continue to perform their silly, ignorant teasing and laughter, with no idea of what was to come.

"Lily?" James called from downstairs, and her fist made a clenching, startled movement on the photograph.

"Yes?"

"The coffee's ready, want some?"

"Just a minute!" she called back, standing up. She realized how ridiculous she was being, acting like she was hiding something from him. But she stuffed the picture in her dresser drawer anyway, even moving some of the things in it around to better conceal it. _I'll throw it away later,_ she told herself. Then she closed the drawer quickly. As she exited the room to go downstairs, she turned her gaze from the mirror, not wanting to know what she might glimpse there. Anger would be nice, but she wasn't sure that was what she would see. She had the feeling that what might appear in her face would be closer to sadness and regret.

Her hand shook when she poured her coffee. "You all right?" James asked.

"Fine," she said, smiling weakly. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Why, indeed.

James walked over and kissed her cheek. Lily had to close her eyes, trying to stop the memory of her own kiss on—_his_—cheek, all those years ago.

"Do you want to go for a walk later?" she asked on impulse. It had been too long since they'd spent any sort of romantic, as opposed to domestic, time together. They had once gone for long walks in the park, watched any number of Quidditch games together—and later, when they'd first come to the house, he would play the piano and she would smile. And laugh. She felt a small sense of victory that they had once, even in the midst of the war, found time to enjoy themselves. This sense of victory burst with his next words. "Sorry, love. Got to go down to the Ministry. Order business. Maybe some other time, though?"

It wasn't his words that bothered her. Order business came first, she knew that; it was one of the things they had both agreed on even before they got married. It was the tone of his voice as he delivered them. There was no disappointment in it, nothing that would indicate he felt that he was letting her down. It was the sort of voice he would use if he were informing her that they were out of instant coffee, would she be a dear and buy some later?

"Maybe," she responded, and that was that. In the minutes that followed, she watched him stand up from the table, put on his coat, and walk out of the room. She didn't catch a glimpse of him as he left, her gaze instead remaining fixed on her still mostly full cup of coffee, her back to the door. She didn't even turn to try to look. She guessed there would really be no point.

A/N: Please review!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks for the reviews!

* * *

James turned out to be true to his word. He arrived home that evening and said by way of greeting that they were going for a walk in the nearby park, barely giving Lily time to put her shoes on. Something in his face seemed distracted as he told her to hurry up. _How ironic it is that it was I who wanted to go for a walk in the first place, yet he still finds it possible to order me around,_ she thought. But in another minute James's face lightened as she appeared at the door.

"I miss the summer," she remarked as they started down the walk. "Fall came too early this year."

"Yeah," said James. A thin covering of leaves already lay on the ground, crunching under their feet as they walked. Trees lined the path, their nearly-bare limbs etched with startling clarity against the sky.

"I loved playing in the leaves as a child." Lily felt like a girl nervously describing her hobbies on a first date. To her own ears the words sounded stilted, halting, as they came out of her mouth.

"Me too."

Lily let her mind drift. Just a little. "I wish we had met when we were younger. We could have been friends…"

_She doesn't even know where she's going,_ James thought darkly. How long until the conversation led to that bloody Snivellus? Again. And she would stumble right into that topic like she had never seen it coming, like it had already been waiting at the back of her mind. It was not a pleasant thought. "Yeah, Lily, sure," he said. And then, trying to change the subject, "D'you fancy having a Halloween party?"

Lily looked at him in surprise and stopped walking. "You mean with the old gang?" It would be fun to see Remus and Sirius again, she thought—even if that other one, the one who reminded her of rats and dark corners and bad smells, gave her the creeps. "That sounds great. I haven't really managed to keep in touch with my old friends, though…" And even though she was talking about Ruby and Alice and Carmen, another old friend's face floated into her mind's eye. She shoved it away. "I really should visit Frank and Alice, though," she continued, trying to keep her voice sounding normal. Do you remember, they have a son now? Born in July. Name's Neville."

"Cute name, eh?"

"Yeah…" A smile tugged at her lips as she thought of the baby's large eyes and tiny, grasping fingers. She was so caught up in her memories of Neville that she didn't notice James lunging at her.

She jerked away automatically, not realizing until too late that he had simply been bending down to give her a kiss, just a husbandly kiss, and now was pulling back with hurt in his eyes, and oh God she was so jumpy and what had she done? She was a horrible wife, horrible. "Sorry," she blurted, aware as she did so what a feeble thing it was to say. What would she follow it up with? _I'm sorry I dodged your kiss?_ It had been a while since the two of them had shared more than a quick meeting of lips, and she had been distracted. Not that either of those were great excuses. "You just startled me is all."

James stared at her for a long moment. Prickles of shame and embarrassment had begun working their way up her neck. How awful of her. He made an effort to be romantic for once, and she just dodged him? "I'm sorry," she said again, but he was already starting to walk on again.

_We can't just finish our walk like this,_ she thought in desperation. She grabbed his shoulder and he turned, probably wondering what she wanted now. Before he could fix her with that hurt, indignant look again—the look of a boy who had been denied candy—she kissed him. His hands left his sides and moved to hers, grasping her waist through the thick cowl-neck sweater. He pushed his tongue into her mouth and Lily's brow furrowed and something uncomfortable and unwanted formed in her mind, something that reminded her of how she felt when she thought about Peter Pettigrew—but she pushed it away. Back into her skull, where it belonged. Deep into the recesses of her mind.

She had no right to feel that way around her husband. She had married him. She loved him.

Finally breaking the kiss, they resumed walking, more closely now that the horrible tension was gone. Or some of it, anyway. Lily realized she couldn't think of anything more to say now, but luckily she didn't have to, as they were approaching their house again.

Lily hurried up to her room, needing to pee, and grateful to be out of the cold October air. She felt pleased—she _was_ pleased—that she and James had managed a bit of time together. If life with him was this cramped, with just the two of them, what would it be like with a child? Even though Neville's huge wondering eyes were still clear in her mind, she shuddered. She didn't want to imagine how busy she would be in that situation—taking care of the baby, never seeing James as he rushed back and forth hunting down Death Eaters. At that last thought, well—she just stopped thinking, that was all.

She took off her jeans and changed into a pair of comfortable grey sweatpants. When she went back downstairs, James surveyed her with a disapproving expression. "Did you have to change? I liked how you looked in those jeans."

Lily met his gaze in disbelief. "What? Look, James, I'll wear these sweatpants if I want to." She wasn't going to wear those tight, arse-hugging jeans just for his own amusement. "I suggest you stop trying to order me around."

James almost flinched at the fierce look on her face. "Whatever." He waved his wand and a cup full of coffee floated over to him. With another spell, he had summoned the sugar jar, and poured a thin stream of the sweetener into his drink, resolutely not looking at her. Lily watched him drink the vile mixture in disgust. He added so much milk and sugar to that crap it was like liquid fructose. Suddenly she felt a pressing urge to go to her bedroom—alone—and read.

"I'm going back upstairs," she announced, though of course James didn't even look up. She took the stairs two at a time and hurried into her room. She only paused when she realized she had no more books left to read.

* * *

That evening after dinner ("Arroz y pollo, la delicadeza fabulosos de Europa!", as James sometimes heralded it in broken Spanish after a glass or two of wine), the two of them sat listening to the news. The silence between them was, thankfully, broken by the broadcaster's crackling voice. The radio was a welcome houseguest for this reason. It was also unwelcome because of the news it tended to bring. _But we have to listen. We can't just cower in the dark._

She pinched herself viciously, trying to stay awake. Her insomnia had taken a toll; perhaps tonight she'd try some of the potion she'd bought a couple weeks ago, though the side effects sounded unpleasant at best. Her eyelids were heavy, and right about now the radio station seemed to be experiencing more static than normal. Usually the result of many people tuning in at once.

"The Lewen family has disappeared, quite likely the target of Death Eaters…what's that, Bob? Oh, Merlin—we're going live..."

_Perhaps they've been found,_ Lily thought drowsily. What else would cause such a disturbance on the station? Despite herself, despite the horror of what was happening on the other side of the radio station and outside their walls, outside the barrier of magical protection they had created, Lily felt her eyes slipping closed.

"…the Longbottom child, who is the only wizard to ever have survived the killing curse! He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has fled, leaving nothing but a mass of frightened and angry Death Eaters. The news seems to have originated from Dumbledore, who was on the scene just minutes ago, along with Severus Snape—"

Lily sat bolt upright. Had she been dreaming? But no, the announcer's voice continued on, harsh with excitement. "This is breaking news right now, right here, this is going on _live, _Channel Forty-One, folks—"

James's face was frozen in a mask of astonishment. Someone outside of the house screamed, but it sounded to Lily like a scream of triumph rather than terror.

"He's gone?" she managed, and her voice was strange to her own ears. "But what…what was that about…" She couldn't get out his name. To the best of her knowledge, Severus had disappeared after graduation, having become mixed up with the band of dark wizards who were by then already calling themselves Death Eaters. So how had he ended up on the radio, his name mentioned in conjunction with Albus Dumbledore's, the sworn enemy of the wizard Severus was supposed to be working for? This made no sense.

There was a terrific noise from outside, like a firecracker, and Lily's head jerked up in fear—_perhaps the announcer was wrong, perhaps Voldemort's not really gone_—but no, it was only a shower of green and gold sparks erupting into the air. It had come from the house next door, which had its lights on. The night was no longer thick and silent but alive, pierced with noise, with jubiliation, with disbelief. Every other house within view of the Potters' was alight, too; from what she could see, the entire wizarding world had just received the very same news, from whatever radio station they had been listening to. Most families kept the radio on now, unless the news was too depressing, as it had been lately—but anyone who didn't know would surely be finding out very soon.

"Do you realize what this means, Lily?" James was on his feet, his features illuminated by the fireworks still erupting outside, the light turning his eyes green and yellow in flashes. He took hold of her hands and pulled her up beside him; he was grinning, but his face was lit with a strange, powerful excitement. For a moment she felt afraid. But the next second all she could glimpse in his expression was happiness and relief—of course; what else had she been expecting?

"He's gone," she said breathlessly, still not really able to process the news. It seemed absurd, a dream that she would wake from the next morning to find James already gone for work and the world still hushed and terrified.

"But _how?"_ James voiced the question that the entire magical world was doubtless asking themselves at the moment. He turned to look at the radio, which had lapsed into silence, perhaps from an overload of people trying to tune in. He pointed his wand at it and muttered under his breath, cursing when a buzz of static filled the air.

A crack sounded outside their front door, and both jumped. Someone had just Apparated on the walk, on their very doorstep, it seemed. "Who is it?" James shouted. His wand hand was now pointed at the door. Lily drew her own wand, her mind already going to Death Eaters, desperate to avenge their master in any way possible, even though the Potters had no special connection to Voldemort other than being members of the Order. But that might be enough to draw their fury…

A rough voice sounded from the other side of the heavy wood door. "Sirius Black, Animagus a black dog, brother of Regulus Black, and cousin of those dear, dear ladies Narcissa and Bellatrix Black!" His voice was hoarse; he seemed caught between frantic urgency and drunken exultation. "Who are in deep shit, from the sound of it!"

"Sirius!" James called in delight, and magicked the lock open with a twist of his wrist. An unshaven, dark-haired man stepped into the house. A black motorbike lay on the path behind him, glinting in the light of the fireworks that were still going off. A burst of sound spilled into the room: the noise of laughter, of cries of surprise and disbelief, of Apparitions from friends and family of those living in the neighborhood who were looking to celebrate together.

"Everyone had the same idea I did," Sirius said as he entered the house. "Remus wanted to come too, but he's tied up at the Order, fielding questions. Some people don't think it's true. But it is—I can tell you—was there myself—saw the house—" He broke off, shaking his head, his joyful expression tempering somewhat. "Lily!" he exclaimed, just then seeming to notice her.

"Sirius!" She leapt forward and embraced him, pulling away after a few seconds when she felt James's gaze on her. When she looked in her husband's direction, his eyes bored into hers, a slight frown creasing the skin of his forehead. All right, maybe it was different now that they were married, but really—she couldn't give an old friend a hug? On the night of this still seemingly unreal news?

"What happened, man?" James said, finally breaking the awkwardness. He stepped forward and closed the door behind Sirius, who was shaking mud off his boots. "Careful, that's a new carpet."

"New carpet!" Sirius bellowed in exasperation, looking around the room as if searching for a sympathetic audience. "New carpet! You-Know-Who is dead, man! Who gives a flying hippogriff for the cleanliness of your carpets?"

"We don't know if that's really true…" James began. But he was still grinning.

"I was there, I'm telling you. Didn't see it happen, of course, but I saw the aftermath. The house—it's a shambles. Wrecked. The roof's gone. Reubus Hagrid was there with me, and Dumbledore, too; he was the first there. Came flying out of nowhere. The three of us looked for Alice and Frank, but…" The excited light drained out of his eyes as he spoke. Lily, watching him, felt something cold creeping over her body.

"What about them?" she asked finally.

"They're dead." He delivered the news bluntly, as if to remind himself of the finality of it. They had known the two of them at Hogwarts, though they had never been very close. But Lily had spoken to Alice and Frank several times and, standing there, she found herself remembering Frank's easy laugh, the kindness in Alice's round face. Beside her, James's body tensed.

"Apparently they died trying to save their child. Who was who Voldemort was really after, it seems." Sirius hesitated a bit, visibly tensing when he said the dark wizard's name, but he went on. "Little Neville's alive, though—incredible, but it seems that the killing curse he was hit with only left a scar. A scar! Witches and wizards dead the world over, swathes of bodies littering the continent, and this boy has nothing but a jagged line down his forehead!" He stopped himself before the bitterness in his voice could become too apparent. He was aware (or, rather, hoped) that Lily and James might be starting a family themselves sometime soon, and they wouldn't take too kindly to him blaming a baby for being strong enough to defeat Voldemort. However misplaced that blame was.

"Merlin's beard," James said. "But how?"

"No one knows," Sirius replied. "Dumbledore told Reubus to get Neville away, take him somewhere safe—he didn't tell me where. I left as soon as Remus showed up. What matters, though, is that it's over. No one can really quite believe it."

"But they do," said Lily, still listening to the sounds of jubilation coming from outside. The mention of Dumbledore brought her thoughts back to what she had heard on the radio, to how Severus Snape had been mentioned along with him.

"Let's see if I can't get this damn radio working," James muttered, striding over to it. After a minute or so of wrestling with the dials, a noise filled the air.

"…celebrations across the continent! We have now some wizards dialing in from Ghana, with news of how their country is celebrating!"

"Yeah, yeah," James said, waving his wand again, switching to another station.

A woman's excited voice filled the room. "...We have no more updates at this time on exactly what occurred at the Longbottom house. Other than the fact that Dumbledore and an unknown informer for the Order were working together, all we know is that baby Neville survived the Avada Kedavra curse, for the first time in recorded history. And it seems that You-Know-Who has fled, his powers sapped, his supporters in disarray and panic."

_An unknown informer,_ Lily thought, frowning. But hadn't they mentioned his name before, on the other station?

"We'll just have to wait for more updates," James finally said, switching off the radio with another flick of his wrist. "We don't need to hear from wizards in Ghana at the moment." His eyes darted to the door with every loud noise from outside, though, his body still tense. Lily felt the same—it was as though her every nerve were buzzing with adrenaline, with excitement and joy and sorrow and still a bit of disbelief.

"Too right," Sirius agreed, chuckling. "I'll get the Firewhiskey. Remus'll probably be able to get away in an hour or two and then we'll have a proper celebration. He'll know more than those jokers on the radio, anyway." He headed for the kitchen. He knew where they kept their spirits.

"Well, Lily," James said, turning towards her, a smile lighting his face again, "how about we celebrate some now?"

_But what about Severus,_ she thought as James drew her face to his and kissed her with triumph in his eyes, she thought but did not say.

* * *

A/N: Please tell me what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

Remus Lupin joined the three of them sometime around eleven. There were deep shadows under his eyes, but to Lily he looked as young as he had when they left Hogwarts four years ago. "Everyone's frantic," he told them. "But in a good way, this time." Apparently, Voldemort's followers had been captured or fled. Trials were already being set up. "Nothing'll happen to Lucius Malfoy, of course," Remus had said in an undertone. "Too much influence on the Ministry."

"Damn shame. Would've liked to see old Lucius trying to defend himself on the chair," Sirius mused. "I bet quite a lot of wizards would have testimony against him."

"Not if he's blackmailed them into silence, they wouldn't," James put in darkly.

"Oh, I'm sure he has." Remus took a swig of Firewhiskey.

"Where's Wormtail?" James asked. "Haven't seen him for a while. Heard anything about him?"

Remus shook his head. "No. I asked Alastor, but he hadn't heard anything either. Said he feared the worst." He sighed. "Merlin knows how many deaths we aren't even aware of yet."

Flames crackled on the hearth, throwing shadows across the carpet. Every so often someone yelled from outside. The gathering inside the Potters' home seemed oddly subdued by comparison.

"What about the others?" Lily asked, and out of the corner of her eye she saw James throw her a quick, furtive glance.

Remus considered. "Hmmm…well, MacNair won't be in too much trouble. Same as Lucius, too many connections."

"What's happened to Neville?" James interjected.

"We got the boy to safety. Took him to his grandmother's house—she's a formidable witch, he'll be quite safe there. Rubeus Hagrid took him."

"You mean they trusted that blundering giant with a baby?" James said in disbelief, and broke off when he caught Lily glaring at him. "I mean, well…sorry, it's just…I can't help picturing him sitting on Neville." He tried a weak smile, but she didn't return it.

Instead she turned back to Remus. "But how did He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named find out where Alice and Frank lived?" It felt wrong to be referring to the two of them in the past tense. "I thought they were under protection. I thought they had a Secret-Keeper…" She trailed off as she realized how little she had known about any of this. She didn't even known who their Secret-Keeper had been. Well, obviously. That was the entire point of having a Secret-Keeper—their identity was secret.

"Clearly that Secret-Keeper couldn't keep his mouth shut," Sirius said angrily. "Couldn't you have gotten ahold of Albus to ask him who it was? The little rat should be punished."

Remus shook his head. "He was in too much of a hurry. I got the sense that he wasn't even sure himself what had happened—no one's sure of anything, quite yet. He knew who their Secret-Keeper was, definitely—he's the one who suggested him. But all the while he looked like he couldn't quite believe it. And I certainly wasn't going to pester him about it, not when so much else was going on."

Lily stared into the fire, too, watching the flames curl and dance, their movement matching the leaping in her stomach. Her body still felt abuzz. Could she believe it? But she was thinking of something else entirely—not the identity of the Longbottoms' Secret-Keeper, but what she had heard on the radio. She let her mind drift, picturing Severus's face as she had seen it during their last day of Hogwarts, the excitement in his features as he looked in the direction of the grounds. He hadn't noticed her watching him. He was too busy thinking—probably contemplating the glory he would gain serving Voldemort. Was it really possible that he had switched sides and been working with Dumbledore? And why? It made no sense to her.

But she didn't dare pursue the question—Remus clearly knew nothing else, and James's expression was growing more sour by the minute. This was ridiculous. They should be celebrating. Voldemort had been defeated. His supporters were captured or in hiding. But though the noise of jubilation echoed from outside, all she saw on the faces of her companions was exhaustion, and in the case of James, suspicion and disbelief. Remus's gaze met hers for a moment and she looked away quickly, not wanting him to see what she might be thinking.

"I'm getting some Firewhiskey," she announced, rising from the sofa. "Anyone else want some?"

Remus and James both raised a hand. "Me," they said in unison.

In the kitchen, she hesitated, one hand on the cabinet door. James had told her he'd stopped baiting and attacking Severus in their final year at school, but whenever she thought about it, she couldn't remember ever seeing them in the same room together without half the school also being present. If it had just been Severus, and James, and Sirius…with maybe Remus or Peter thrown in…what would have happened? Going by what James had said, nothing. But Lily wasn't so sure—the expression she had just seen on her husband's face was not the expression of a man willing to let sleeping dogs lie.

_Maybe_ you_ should let sleeping dogs lie,_ she thought to herself. _After all, he hasn't been your friend for years. And he never really was in the first place. What kind of friend calls you a Mudblood?_

_ What kind of boyfriend lies to you about attacking the same old friend? _a very different voice spoke up. She shook her head and opened the cabinet door. Happily, there were plenty of bottles of Firewhiskey. She took one—then paused. It might have been a trick of the light, but it looked like one of the bottles way at the back wasn't quite full. She reached back and pulled out three of the bottles from the darkness at the rear of the shelf. And got a shock: they had all been opened, and were in varying stages of emptiness.

Well, if James had been drinking a little more, it was understandable. The stress at the Order had been unbelievable lately. She gnawed her lip, staring at the bottles. But it was odd that he would have tried to conceal it; he would have known she'd never look back here. When she did drink Firewhiskey she didn't normally go rooting around in the back of the cabinet.

"Lily, what are you doing?" James's voice came from the sitting room.

"Nothing!" she called back, and shoved the half-empty bottles back far into the cabinet, where they belonged.

* * *

Lily awoke, sweating. Her dream was already fading from her memory, the faces and events petering out into the stillness of the morning. The sun had just risen, the soft grey light of dawn filtering through the curtains. The air was utterly still.

James lay snoring beside her, and she glanced over at him, the events of the previous night and early morning coming back to her in a haze. The conversations with Sirius and Remus, their eventual leave-taking, her and James's drunken, almost violent lovemaking that had ensued afterwards. She ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to get warm. She and James hadn't slept together for over a month before last night, and as the memory leaked into her head it seemed strange to her, like the event had happened to someone else. At one point James had whispered into her ear, "Let's make our own Neville," and she'd cast the contraceptive spell quickly and silently so he wouldn't notice. He would be disappointed, she thought. It wasn't that she didn't want children. It was just that something in her seemed to be telling her to wait, to slow down, to contemplate whether she really wanted to have children now. With this man.

_Stop it,_ she thought, annoyed with herself, with the train of thought she seemed to be headed down. _Who else would you have children with? It's not like you have a lover or anything. James is your past and your present. And your future._

Except he wasn't the only person in her past. Or, as it now seemed, her present.

Lily slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. All the while she felt strangely tentative. She lay her hairbrush down gently on the table when she was done with it. It was as though any sudden movement or loud noise would shatter the new reality that had descended the previous evening, and spirit her back to forty-eight hours ago, when the war was on and families were being slaughtered left and right.

She got dressed and, with another quick glance at James's sleeping form, crept quietly down the stairs. They creaked at the bottom and she felt like some kid sneaking out while her parents were asleep. But she wasn't a child, and James wasn't her parent. She could come and go as she pleased. So she didn't know why she couldn't shake the odd, furtive feeling that had settled on her.

It was colder outside than she had expected, but she welcomed the cool autumn air. The morning was still and silent—the neighbors were probably sleeping off last night's celebration, she thought dryly. As was James. She should be too, judging by the amount of Firewhiskey she had consumed the previous evening, but strangely enough, her head felt clear. Maybe it was the chill in the air. Her short hair fluttered about her jaw and she pushed it back impatiently.

Without really knowing where she was going, she found herself in the park. The walk to it seemed to take much less time when she was alone. She stood at the entryway, looking up at the branches of the trees, which resembled bones scratching against the slate-gray sky. Each inhalation of air felt like she was dipping her head into an icy pool of water. Bringing with it clarity, and calm.

Then, behind her, someone inhaled sharply. It was the sound of someone so surprised he thinks he might be imagining things.

She whirled around and met the man's stunned gaze. It was almost surreal to see him, since he had appeared in her mind so often over the past day…and, if she was honest with herself, longer.

"Severus," she said, and was surprised that her tone was so measured and even. Couldn't he hear her heart hammering, even through the thick layer of her sweater?

His eyes had widened in shock. His nose was as hooked and beak-like as ever, although his face was thinner than she remembered. The cloak he wore was long, trailing to the ground like liquid darkness.

"Don't run," he said quickly. "Did you hear the radio?" She must have; otherwise she'd be trying to curse him and screaming all at the same time.

"I know," she said, still feeling her heartbeat thudding in her ears. "You gave me a fright, though."

"Who else knows?" He was frowning now, his gaze still fixed on hers. "Who was in the room when my name was mentioned?"

"Nobody but James and me."

He looked relieved for a few seconds, and then her words seemed to sink in. "You're living with him now." And something in his face shut down. Lily watched his gaze dart away, his body tense up, like everything in him was trying not to walk away but losing the battle against his damnable pride. _Oh, stop it, Severus,_ she thought as he took a step backwards. She wasn't even aware of walking forwards until her hand closed around his arm. He stiffened, not turning around.

"What are you doing here?" she said. "Why did you switch sides?" And, unasked, _Did you REALLY switch sides?_

Severus didn't reply. His eyes shifted back and forth over her face, as if gauging her trust. They were darker than she remembered. "Tell me!"

He snatched his arm away like her touch burned him, but his expression softened somewhat when she flinched. Lily knew she should go back home. What was she doing, standing outside the park with Severus Snape, whom she hadn't spoken to for four years, when her husband was probably just waking up and wondering where she was? But the thought of James seemed alien right now, like an intrusive thumb pushing into her skull. As though she were asleep and someone's loud, irritating voice from the waking world were forcing itself into her dream.

This time he really did take a step away. "Isn't your husband waiting for you?"

"Are you really going to be like that?" She felt her blood pressure rising. "You show up here, outside the park, like you're waiting for me, and you just want to storm off and leave, without any explanation?"

"I don't owe you, or anyone other than Dumbledore, an explanation." Then his tone softened. "I can only say…I regret beyond words what I did as a younger man, the people I associated with. The glory and power I thought those things would bring me. I regret it more than I can say."

Lily had no idea how to respond.

"I didn't expect you to show up," he continued.

"That makes two of us," Lily said, almost to herself. As he turned to glance in the opposite direction she noticed a long red cut stretching up his neck, nicking the edge of his jaw. She caught her breath at the sight, and something in her heart clenched. Too late she realized his gaze had shifted to hers again, and when his eyes found her own, she felt as if she were looking into two great pools of darkness. This time she felt a different sort of invasion, one she was helpless against, as she had never learned Occlumency. "Stop it," she hissed, and the next second he was gone from her mind.

She wrenched her eyes away. "How dare you," she bit out. "You just show up here and rifle through my skull like it's your personal filing cabinet?"

"I'm sorry," he said, and he seemed to mean it. His expression had changed. She wondered how much he had seen. Maybe he had just entered her thoughts to know if she was going to curse him. Maybe she was getting mad over nothing. But what had floated to the forefront of her mind as he had done so was the image of James, or what was supposed to be James, as she hadn't quite been able to picture his face. Just a sort of blankness under a mop of untidy black hair. And now Severus was looking at her with something almost like hope.

James had probably woken by now, was waiting for her with impatience that would soon turn to worry. She needed to tell Severus that she had to get back, had to make her husband coffee, couldn't waste any more time with a boy she had once called a friend. She opened her mouth to say this.

"Will you walk with me?" was what ended up coming out instead.

"Lily," he began, and the coldness in his voice, and the longing underneath it, made her heart clench again. And begin to beat faster. "I didn't come all the way out here to waste your time."

"Sev!" The old nickname slipped out before she could catch herself. His eyes flickered at the sound of it.

"I _would_ like to walk with you," he said, that hope edging into his voice again. Albeit cautious. Guarded. "But I think you know that."

"So that's why you came back." She began to smile. "To take a walk. Don't you have business with the Order?"

His arm twitched. "No one other than Dumbledore knows of my involvement. And most of them would want nothing to do with me even if they did."

"Isn't that better than them thinking you're a Death Eater?"

"They'll find out the truth eventually," he mused. "There'll be a trial, of course. Dumbledore arranged it himself. They will have 'captured' me"—his voice dripped with disdain—"and then Albus will step in and declare my innocence. Upon hearing this, half of the members of the Order will drop dead of heart attacks." He shrugged. "Oh well. Good thing not as many people are needed anymore."

Lily fought back a smile at his words, at the hint of the sarcastic humor she remembered from the Severus of years ago. "And you really won't tell me why you came to our side?"

"There's nothing to tell, really." But Lily got the feeling he wasn't saying everything. "I don't know how that damn radio announcer got his information about me…someone must have glimpsed me before I disapparated. Hopefully he was gagged and muzzled after that one slip. Dumbledore knew my involvement was to be kept secret until the very end…and, if possible, longer."

"Until the trial," Lily reminded him. Though he didn't seem to need reminding. He seemed as if his thoughts had gotten caught on a particular detail, in something he had been saying, and Lily realized what when he glanced away again. He was looking in the direction of the houses down the street and now his eyes were hard. "So you heard the news with James? What a merry little conversation must have ensued. A veritable choir of suspicion, probably." He was cutting, Lily realized with a chill, uncomfortably close to the truth. Hinting that she wouldn't have dared defend Severus to James's face, even if she had believed the radio announcer about him working for the Order.

"We were interrupted soon after by Sirius and Remus." As she spoke, Severus's frown deepened. _Maybe mentioning them was a mistake._ "There wasn't much time to dwell on you, really."

"Do you believe me?" He still wasn't looking at her. "Or do you agree with your husband—that I'm really still a Death Eater, lying, trying to save my own skin, and have somehow bewitched Albus Dumbledore and all the members of the Order into thinking I'm on their side?"

"If I could perform Legilimency on you, you wouldn't even need to ask that."

He turned to her with something like a smile tugging on one corner of his mouth. "But you can't. And I'm asking you."

"You could just look into my mind and see the answer," she replied. "So why are you even asking me?"

"I want to hear you say it." He was tense, she realized, prepared for her to say she did possibly agree with the others. She had always been on their side, after all, at least after fifth year and that disaster. But she let that slide from her mind.

"I do believe you," she said finally. "I'm not sure why. And I'm probably being very stupid. But I do."

"No, as a matter of fact you're very smart," he replied, smiling a bit more now. His eyes seemed slightly less cold. "Much smarter than those bumblers you were with last night, who, if they had all heard the announcement, would still refuse to believe the truth, always sticking to old grudges and old prejudices." His tone indicated that this was something he fully expected from the wizarding community after the trial commenced. Perhaps he was picturing everyone from Order members to random witches on the street railing against him. Insisting that he was and would be a greasy git, a dark wizard, till the day he died.

Lily started when she realized she had been imagining this last in James's voice.

Severus continued, "You're too good for them." Although what Lily heard underneath that, what she saw in his eyes, was _You're too good for him._

And she hated it, but inwardly, again, she had to agree with him.

* * *

A/N: Please review!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I don't know if that last chapter was a disaster due to the lack of reviews (I'm not being snarky here, I really just have no idea) but I figured I may as well post this, too.

* * *

"Are you coming?" Lily asked, starting down the path to the park. Severus followed her in silence, unfamiliar with its twists and turns. He remembered her dragging him around when they were children, she always so bright, so eager, so innocent. While he had never been innocent at all…

"I take it you've never been here before." She turned to face him with an expectant look on her face. He was still getting used to her short hair. He wondered if Potter had made her cut it.

"No," he said, her casual tone throwing him off balance. What was she doing, talking as though everything were normal, as if this were some meeting between old friends, as though she weren't aware of the effect she had on him? "You and Potter probably come here all the time, though." He hadn't quite meant to say it, but couldn't keep the bitterness out of his tone. Although if what he had seen in her mind was genuine, the two of them weren't as madly, sickeningly in love as he had feared. Not that it mattered. He had simply come here to make sure she was alive, not to…not to make some idiotic ploy for her affection.

She rolled her eyes and began walking more quickly. "Oh, stop, for once, can't you?"

"Stop what?" He lengthened his stride, quickly outpacing her.

"Sulking!" She was nearly jogging now. Despite herself she began to laugh a bit, at the complete absurdity of the situation. Here she was on an early fall morning, running after Severus Snape, telling him to stop sulking. Soon she'd be offering him to buy him some shampoo.

"You think I'm sulking? No, I'm just remarking on the state of things."

"Yeah, it's probably just the way you always are." Lily came to a sudden halt. "Not that I'd know that."

"It hasn't been so long…" He was frowning, searching her face. For what?

"Severus, it's been four years." She was no longer laughing. All the amusement had trickled out of her at the sight of his eyes, at how they moved across her face, trying to gauge her thoughts without dipping into her mind. "If you want to talk about old school rivalries"—_more than _school_ rivalries at this point_, a voice spoke up in her head—"and gripe and moan, go right ahead. But it's not me who's being sullen, you know. It's not me who's…who's walking really fast and refusing to speak frankly."

"What do you have to be sullen about?" He glanced up at the sky, at the dead branches. "And just what do you want me to be frank about, exactly?"

"Tell me again why you came back." She realized that one of her feet was tracing an abstract shape against the ground, and she stilled it. "Not back to the Order, if you don't want to talk about that. But to here. This park. Why you were standing here when I turned around, looking almost as surprised as I felt."

A few moments of silence. Then: "I wanted to make sure you weren't dead, all right?" he snapped.

For a moment she couldn't think what to say. But the silence between them, now that he had told her this, was not quite as awkward. Far less awkward than what had hung between her and James during their walk yesterday. Had it really only been yesterday? And—hang on a minute—was she really comparing Severus to James? James to Severus? They were two completely different worlds. They were too different to even think about in the same breath. Each one formed an important part of her life, whether past or present or future. But only one completely overtook her mind when she thought of him, making her stomach twist, her eyes dart nervously away from whomever she was looking at at the time.

Then, grudgingly, he said, "I'm not a fan of the haircut. There. There's your honesty."

One corner of her mouth pulled into a wry smile. "Yeah, it was James's idea."

"There, I was right," he said, his eyes flashing. "Doesn't matter. He couldn't ruin your face. You're still lovely." His face colored on the last word and he glanced away. She could almost hear him thinking _what an idiot I am, Lily's married, she wants nothing to do with you._

"I'm glad you're not dead, too," she told him.

And something in her smile as she said it, something in the way her green eyes glinted up at him in the way he had always wished they would, made him find the courage to lean in, draw her face up to his, and kiss her.

Often he had wondered what would have happened that night outside the Gryffindor common room, if he had had the courage to tell her the truth. Tell her _why_ she was different. Maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe it would have been him she had chosen, instead of…Potter.

To his disbelief, she kissed him back, one hand coming up to rest on his back. Her face was cold from the chill, and he felt the urge to sweep her into his arms, to protect her.

And then, just as quickly, she pulled away. "Wait." Her cheeks were flushed, her hair in disarray, her eyes wide. "I—I can't…" She was shaking her head, bringing a hand to her mouth as if not quite believing what had just happened. "I'm married…"

Severus didn't miss the way her face closed down as she said this. The way her eyes darted away, a slight furrow creasing her forehead. He hated the way she looked older when she said it.

"I can't," she said again, and turned and walked quickly away, her boots clacking on the hard ground. With a few more steps there was a _crack_ and she was gone. Severus was left standing alone, the wind having suddenly turned bitter and frigid, whipping his cloak around him. He cursed the winter and his own boldness and, most of all, James Potter.

* * *

"Where were you?" James asked as soon as she entered the house. Lily had apparated right onto the front doorstep. She hoped he would chalk the redness in her cheeks up to the cold and not, well, anything else.

_God, what did I just do?_ she kept thinking. _What is wrong with me? _ She'd kissed another man—while she was married to James, James Potter, James who had taken her to his Quidditch games, James who had waited for her at the end of the aisle, James who hadn't slept with her in a month before last night, James who had taken furtive sips of Firewhiskey and then lied about it.

"Out for a walk," she answered. That much was true, at least. "I was feeling pretty good."

"Me too, Lil. I still can't really believe it. The news is all over the Wizarding world—I even heard something about Dedalus Diggle and his shooting stars up in Kent. We've got to be careful or the Muggles'll know something's up."

"Still," she said quietly. "It's incredible. Little Neville. If I'd known he had that in him when I visited him back in August…he looked just like any ordinary baby to me."

"Oh, right. Speaking of Neville. I got an owl from his grandmother." James crossed to the table and held up a letter. "Inviting us to Frank and Alice's funeral, two days from now."

"Oh…" All the air seemed to go out of Lily. Something in her throat closed up at their names mixed up with the word _funeral._ She had been to too many funerals in the past few months. Hopefully this would be the last of a number of unnecessary deaths.

"I'm sorry, Lily." James placed the missive on a large pile of letters. "I know they were your friends."

"Let's talk about something happy." She couldn't talk about it, not now, not after so many insane things had already happened.

"All right." James came over to her with a smile on his face, like he had been waiting for her to suggest this. "First things first…I noticed something when you mentioned Neville."

"You did?"

"Yeah. Your eyes lit up. So cute." He grinned and she noticed creases at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there before. Severus, too, had looked older, his face thinner and longer than previously. And then there was that scar…

_Stop it. Stop it. Stop it._

James kissed her and she tensed automatically, battling the irrational fear that he would somehow be able to taste Severus on her lips, to know that she had been kissing someone else just minutes ago. One of his hands made its way up to her cropped, stunted hair.

_Severus hadn't liked it. Severus liked the way I looked before…just like I did._

"Poor bugger, growing up without a mom and dad," James continued when he surfaced. "Good thing our little one won't have that problem, right?"

"What?" She should have seen this coming, she realized.

"Oh, don't pretend you don't know…" His hand traced its way through her hair. "You told me when we first got together that you wanted kids someday."

_Someday!_ she screamed inside. _Not right away! Not at the age of twenty-one! _She said, with a calmness she didn't feel, "Isn't it a bit early to be thinking of that?"

His face took on a slightly mopey expression. "Ah, come on, Lily, I've always wanted a son to teach my Quidditch moves to." He tried a grin, but she didn't return it.

"It's not like I can just press a button and pop out a little boy," she said. "It's not that easy, James. What if we have a girl instead, for example?"

"Maybe Augusta Longbottom will be willing to trade!" he laughed, then stopped at the expression on her face. "Jesus, Lily, it was a _joke._ If we had a girl I'd love her just as much as a son. You do believe that, don't you?"

"Yes, of course I do, James." And she did. But she wasn't sure James really knew what having children entailed. Then, without meaning to: "How much have you been drinking lately?"

His expression changed. Really changed—slipping into something secretive and dark for a half-second before he was able to clear it. She stepped out of his embrace, and the hand that had been trailing lazily through her hair dropped back to his side. "I don't know what you mean." His words were empty, flat.

"Well, normally, people don't take sips of Firewhiskey and then put the bottles back on the shelf," she explained. "It's a little weird."

James was scowling now, and she couldn't gauge whether he was angrier with her, or at himself for making such a careless move, probably in the midst of drunkenness. He had often been distant and removed in the evenings, slipping easily into sleep—maybe this had been the effect of alcohol. Contrary to what one might expect, James was not a happy drunk. Alcohol, which tended to loosen the tongues and raise the spirits of most people, had the opposite effect on him: it dampened his normally extroverted personality and made him moody and closed in on himself. Perhaps what she had assumed was mere sleepiness had actually been the beginnings of a drunken stupor.

"I'm sorry I can't be perfect," he said, turning away. "Sorry to have disappointed you. A man needs a drink once in a while, Lily. Maybe your mother should have explained that to you."

"What exactly are you suggesting about my parents?"

He waved a hand. "Oh, go on. Get all upset. Like you always do. Merlin's arse. I can't even bring up a goddamned joke before…without…"

"You aren't making any sense. God, sometimes I wish…"

_Sometimes I wish I hadn't married you._

"What?" Now he was looking at her intently, as if he could guess what she had almost said. "Where were you going with that?"

"Nowhere," she said, and dodged past him, upstairs. _That was exactly right,_ she thought later, as she lay on her bed and stared out of the window at the white empty sky. _I'm nobody, going nowhere._

* * *

A/N: Please tell me what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Chapter 5 up.

* * *

Spinner's End lay at the heart of a maze of complex brick streets. Beyond the last row of houses was nothing but miles of open country, flat dry grass without a hill in sight. A river churned sluggishly in this in-between space, less of a barrier than a thin strip of gray sludgey water. A perpetual stink hung around the place, probably from garbage rotting somewhere or maybe that same river.

Most of the windows had locks on them. It wasn't uncommon to glance down the alleyway and catch sight of a figure who would disappear the moment you turned to look again. Right now the figure appeared in a whirl of his black cloak, and in a moment he had entered his house, to leave the steet as empty and silent as it had been before.

Spinner's End was disgusting and depressing, but Severus had gotten used to it after living there for so long. In fact it suited him rather well. Better than ever at the moment, because right now he didn't want to be somewhere happy and cheerful like the park near the Potters' house. Even in late autumn it had been colorful, the leaves lying in orange-red-yellow patterns on the ground, the majestic gate standing tall and proud at its entrance. It was the polar opposite of his own neighborhood, where the only people who lived there couldn't care less about its state and had lost the hope of having anything better.

And when it came to something else, or rather, someone else, Severus had nearly lost that hope. Now he was realizing he would have been better off losing it completely. Then he would never have come to the Potters' neighborhood two days ago—disturbing, or rather shattering, its peace—and Lily would be making her husband a cup of tea, or whatever they did in the mornings.

He glowered at the room around him, at the books mouldering in their covers, at the candles frozen in various stages of melting. Despite the fire that was burning in the hearth, the darkness seemed to edge in from the corners and ooze out from cracks in the wall, like an actual substance rather than a mere lack of light. Finally he turned back to the fireplace, where, he knew, the head of Albus Dumbledore would presently be appearing. He stared into the dancing, strangely hypnotic flames, letting his mind wander.

Despite what he had seen in Lily's head when he had used Legilimency on her—the strange absence where her husband's face was—he was not stupid enough to think it meant anything. And he was angry at himself for doing precisely this. So perhaps the Potters were undergoing some marital discord. It meant nothing. Not with what he knew was going to happen.

He himself had heard a prophecy from the mouth of some obscure Seer who had had only one real prophecy under her belt, as far as anyone knew. The prophecy had outlined the birth of two children: both born at the end of July, both with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. The prophecy had also mentioned who the parents, or rather, mothers, would be, identifying them by their maiden names: Lily Evans and Alice Opatterney. The sibyll had not, however, placed the births of these children in any comprehensible context in time. It turned out that only one of those two children had been conceived at the time, and was the initial target for the Dark Lord's wrath. Not knowing this, Severus had gone to Dumbledore, and insisted they put Lily—the Potter couple—under magical protection. When Dumbledore paid a visit to the Potters and realized that only one of the two children in the prophecy existed at the time, he had suggested that the Longbottoms find themselves a Secret-Keeper. Meanwhile he had insisted to Severus, for reasons the man was skeptical of at best, that Voldemort would not go after the Potters while the child did not yet exist, and that the primary target would be the Longbottoms. Their Secret-Keeper had remained a secret himself until he revealed their location to the Dark Lord and thus sentenced them to death; even now Severus had no idea who it had been. The thing about such an intricate network of secrets was that even those in the Order's inner circle didn't know everything. As though it were comprised of people standing in a line, but each could only see the person to their right; to their left was darkness.

Severus had eventually found himself resenting the small child Neville for causing him to jump to conclusions and make a fool of himself and reveal to his former Headmaster, and later his tenuous link to the Order, of his doomed and hopeless love for Lily Evans Potter. Anyone who strode around the Headmaster's office ranting about prophecies and the need for Secret-Keepers and magical protection and Merlin knew what else for a woman he had not spoken to in years…that was pitiable.

But the bottom line was, eventually the child would be born, probably at the end of the coming July in accordance with the prophecy. And marital discord was nothing compared to things like babies. No married wizarding couple, even if they _had_ been experiencing slight troubles, would break up if a baby was on the way.

He was just about to leave the room when he heard the telltale _poof_ from behind him—the sound of flames rising and reacting to an intruder in their midst. A puff of ash blew out from the grate, scattering soot across the carpet. He turned to see the Hogwarts Headmaster looking out at him through the fire.

"You're earlier than I expected," Severus said by way of greeting.

"Severus." The blue eyes were not twinkling, but steady and grave in the lined face. "I expect you heard the news. Even though you didn't stay to grace us with your presence."

"I thought I was supposed to keep my involvement secret."

Dumbledore fixed him with a meaningful stare. "I trust Reubus Hagrid, as well as Sirius Black. Neither of them would have been a threat to our secrecy. As I told you minutes before they showed up—and a minute before you disapparated."

"I have to disagree with you there," Severus said, unable to keep some bitterness from seeping into his tone. "I see no reason whatsoever to trust Black. And I don't know how you've convinced yourself that he can keep his mouth shut when it comes to Order secrets."

"And he would say the same of you, Severus," Dumbledore said, sounding tired. "As no doubt he is saying right now, actually."

"What?" Severus frowned. "What do you mean? How can he know of this?"

Dumbledore looked the slightest bit uncomfortable. "It seems that the need to keep your involvement secret is a moot point by now. According to Minerva, you were seen. Just before you disapparated, by a wizarding reporter who came early to the area. If I am not mistaken, you are now tied to the events of last night whether you like it or not."

Severus cursed.

"But I take it you know what's going to happen to the Longbottom boy?"

"He'll be under his grandmother's protection," he replied flatly. "As you told me earlier. I haven't forgotten, Dumbledore."

Dumbledore regarded him for a moment, and then, seeming to determine that he wasn't deeply invested in the topic of Neville Longbottom, moved to a different subject. His tone was still heavy. Severus would have assumed it was the atmosphere of Spinner's End that was to blame, except that this exhaustion had been present in the Headmaster's voice and face for months now. "You knew Pettigrew, didn't you?"

A sour taste came into Severus's mouth. Why did the old man feel the need to state the obvious, over and over again? If the next thing he said was _You love Lily Potter, don't you?,_ Severus would smash the damn mirror. "I wish I hadn't."

"I suppose his old friends wish that too," Dumbledore answered. "Or they will soon, anyway. They don't know at the moment. Only you, I, and the wizards who brought Pettigrew into custody know."

"Funny. Thought they would have glimpsed the rat in his face. Or at the very least smelled a rat." Severus snorted at his own pun.

Dumbledore's expression was familiar, his eyes maddeningly penetrative. It brought Severus directly back to his years at Hogwarts, trying to avoid the clear blue gaze as it swept over the room, praying that the Headmaster had no knowledge of the curses he studied after dark or the rumors he and his new friends had heard whispered through the corridors. "He managed to hide himself well, didn't he? Even the other Death Eaters had no idea he was working for their master. Including you, Severus."

Severus's left arm itched. Was the man doing everything in his power to make him uncomfortable?

There were a few more seconds of silence. Then Dumbledore said, in a slightly different tone, "I believe I have not thanked you yet. Although," he continued, "it would mean slightly more coming from Augusta Longbottom. Or perhaps someone else."

Severus found himself glaring at the bookcase to his right. Damn the man and his infernal questions. And those shrewd blue eyes. He knew very well whom Dumbledore was referring to. "Augusta Longbottom would not thank me," he said tightly. More to steer the conversation away from the unnamed _someone else_. "She is probably, at the moment, cursing me in every language she knows. Had I been aware of Pettigrew's involvement, her son and his wife wouldn't have had to die."

"No one expected you to know that the Longbottoms' Secret-Keeper was working for Voldemort," Dumbledore told him. "Even I had no idea, and it was I who suggested him—a foolish decision, I will freely admit. And it was two innocents who paid the price. In every war, no matter how much intrigue goes on, there are things we do not know. In fact, these things seem to increase exponentially—it seems that the more spies there are, the more confusion, the more crossed wires, the more miscalculations."

This last felt like a personal accusation to Severus. It stung even though he knew deep down that he was twisting Dumbledore's words inside his own mind, turning the meaning pointed and critical. "Miscalculations. You speak of miscalculations, Dumbledore. How was I to know the prophecy referred to Neville Longbottom and not to Lily Potter's unborn child? A child that apparently hasn't been _conceived_ yet?" He was horribly aware of the sulky, self-pitying tone in his voice. He wished he could just stop talking. But he did not seem to be able to stop the bitter torrent of words from flowing out of his mouth. "I should have known. It was all for nothing."

"It was _not_ all for nothing," Albus told him sternly. "Supposing Voldemort had managed to kill Neville without anything going wrong for him? Supposing the child had not, in fact, been able to 'vanquish the Dark Lord'? Then Voldemort would have satisfied himself half-done slaughtering all those the prophecy referred to. He would have then simply waited for Lily's child to come into the world before killing it, and its parents for good measure. Which was, if I remember correctly, what you wanted to prevent. What you pleaded with me to prevent."

Severus's eyes flashed. He had pleaded only twice in his life—once to save what he thought would be Lily's life, and once several years earlier, at his initiation to the ranks of the Death Eaters. He had had the Cruciatus curse used on him over and over until he thought he would go mad from the pain. Or faint, or die, or all of those at once. But the hateful weakness he had exhibited then paled in comparison to the disgust with which he regarded his words to Dumbledore. Begging for one's own life under torture was one thing, especially when it brought mercy; begging for the life of someone who wanted nothing to do with you, who had despised you for years, was utterly different.

"Why did he not just kill the two of them outright?" he asked, repeating the same question he had posed at Dumbledore's news that Lily's son had not yet been conceived. Even then he hadn't been convinced, hadn't trusted Dumbledore's assurances that Lily and James—the Headmaster had always been careful to include James in his report, as though Severus gave a damn—were safe. "That would ensure they wouldn't be able to follow through with what the prophecy said they would do." He fought to keep his face from twisting into a grimace at the thought of what that entailed.

"Because Voldemort's mind does not operate that way." Dumbledore, too, repeated the same thing he had said then. "He would consider it being unfaithful to the prophecy—yes, Severus, Voldemort does have some knowledge of how these things work," he added at Severus's raised eyebrow. "He would be careful to follow its terms exactly—to murder the infant the moment it appeared in the world, and no sooner. He would let every piece of the puzzle slide into place before sweeping his hand across the board and scattering them. He has always thought like that."

"Why are you referring to him in the present tense?" Severus asked abruptly.

Dumbledore's face looked odd, old, in the yellow light. "Because, Severus, I do not believe for a second that he is really gone. Wizards like Voldemort do not die like you or I would. Those who believe this are fooling themselves."

"Lucius does. MacNair does. Any number of the others. They have pleaded with the Ministry, sought forgiveness; gotten it, in most cases, no matter how undeserved—"

"You do not need to engage in that sort of bargaining, Severus." The blue eyes were fixed on his. "You have my protection."

"I was not speaking of my own protection!" he nearly spat. Did Dumbledore really think him such a coward as that? "I have not spoken of my own protection for one moment since I began this operation for you, Dumbledore!"

"I know. But I also know that it was not for me that you began it."

Severus found his gaze moving upwards, to the mirror above the fireplace that reflected his own sitting room back to him. He met his own eyes: dark, cold, like two beetles staring out of caves. Everything in the landscape around him was dark in some way, or mouldering, or yellowed, or old. Whereas James Potter's house was a paradise by comparison.

"No matter," he told the Headmaster. "They never need know. Your thanks is enough."

Though it wasn't.

* * *

A/N: Please leave a review :)


	6. Chapter 6

It looked as if the wizarding world didn't know how to start celebrating. Everywhere Lily looked, people were praising the "Boy Who Lived." The joy was infectious, and relief was present in everyone's face—save in some of the dark facades glimpsed under the shadows of hoods in Knockturn Alley, though a good portion of those wizards had fled when Voldemort had been defeated. Even Lily began to worry after a few days; instead of fizzling out, the celebrations seemed to feed on their own energy, burning higher and brighter every night and into the days. Surely it wouldn't be long until the Muggles began noticing something. If they hadn't already.

Lily had passed the last couple of days in a haze—too many things had been happening lately. Frank and Alice's funeral had been the one concrete event to break up the endless whirlwind of celebration, a sobering reminder of all the wizarding world had lost in the war that they still couldn't quite believe was over. The sky had been a pristine blue, a shade so clear and pure it hurt to look at. Nothing like the blank whiteness which had been its normal color for the past few weeks.

When she and James had arrived at the funeral, Lily had been stunned at how few people had shown up. Later she learned that many more people had disappeared, or been killed, than she'd first thought. How would she have known, anyway? She had bitten her lip, staring at the less-than-overwhelming turnout of people, thinking of how she ought to have tried to maintain contact with her old school friends. Instead of letting them slide out of her life. Of the ones who had shown up, many of them had changed almost beyond recognition, lines and weight having appeared on them in the relatively short span of four years. She had almost walked right past a heavily scarred, one-armed girl before realizing it was an old friend, named Rachel. It had been burnt off with the kind of curse, Rachel told her with a grim smile, that prevented its being regrown, or even a phantom arm affixed as a substitute. Lily hadn't asked; Rachel seemed to have been wanting to tell her this. "I'm sick of everyone saying 'What great news' and then shutting their mouths as soon as they see my arm," she'd confided to Lily. "What, because I've been damaged in the war, that means I'm not happy to see him gone? I'm just as happy as anyone else. Do they think they can't mention it without giving me the screaming terrors? How can they not mention it? How can I _not_ think about it every single day?"

And indeed, there was a great deal of hullaballo about the Boy Who Lived. So much so that people seemed to be forgetting about the recent deaths across the continent. Lily knew it was irrational, but she couldn't help thinking that the celebrations were a sign of disrespect for those who had lost their lives in the war.

The first day of November had also marked the first of the trials. After Voldemort's fall, the fervor that usually surrounded the matter of rounding his followers up had calmed somewhat. One proof of this was the reinstatement of the ban on Unforgivable curses. Alastor Moody, another Order member, had reacted less than favorably to the news. Lily and James had invited him, Sirius, and Mundungus over to their house for a mini-Order meeting. Moody had seized upon this as an opportunity to grumble at the news, and argue that the free-for-all method had worked well enough in the years prior to Voldemort's downfall. "We shouldn't start going easy on them just because old Voldy's vanished—or appeared to," he muttered. "That's probably what they're counting on."

Except in this case it didn't seem to Lily to be particularly paranoid.

"How've the trials been going, Alastor?" James asked. "I hear Igor Karkaroff got off?"

"You want to give me a permanent case of indigestion, man?" Moody glared in his direction. "He certainly did get off. As slippery as all those fur seals he wears as coats. Took me six years to catch him and bring him in, and because he's got a good list of names—faugh!" He gave everyone who sat around the table a good glare, in case they were secretly disagreeing with him.

Lily had wanted to mention Severus, but knew this would be foolhardy in the extreme—as far as she knew, no one other than herself, James, and Dumbledore knew he had even been involved on their side. Alastor was probably still on the hunt for him. She remembered something Severus had said to her: _Albus will step in and declare my innocence. Upon hearing this, half of the members of the Order will drop dead of heart attacks._

A smile twitched at the corner of her mouth; the faces of Sirius and James had floated into her mouth at the memory of those words. Then she remembered what had happened not too long after they were spoken, and pushed that thought out of her mind fast.

* * *

It was the morning of November third. James was already flipping through the paper when Lily came downstairs, rubbing her eyes and feeling groggier than normal. Except that this feeling of tiredness had in fact become the new normal, over the last few days or so. Her body seemed to be running backwards. She often yawned throughout the day, but the moment she put her head down on the pillow, turned off the bedside lamp and closed her eyes—she felt wide awake. It was like her body was telling her to keep her eyes open, popped wide and staring into the dim corners of her room, for reasons beyond Lily's knowledge. When wakefulness finally came, it was almost a relief, in that hour when the last dreams of her sleep always reminded her of slogging through a muck, recycling the most basic thoughts over and over again in a series of lethargic half-dreams until she wanted to rip off the covers and unstick herself from the dense heat of her sun-baked bed.

But what was worse, what was worse: some of those dreams called to her. They had a certain pull to them, something that made her _want_ to stick around in bed for a while and lounge in those half-remembrances and half-imaginings, rather than go downstairs and face James and reality and the cold bleakness of the oncoming winter.

In all of them she saw Severus's face. His cheeks and hooked nose reddened from the chill, his eyes beetle-black and glittering out at her, but not cold like they had been years ago, oh no; in her dreams his eyes were warm. They had the same warmth they had held in the park two days before. And now, two mornings later, Lily couldn't shake herself of the image.

The newspaper James was bending over, the pages lying flat against the table, shouted DEATH EATER TRIALS CONTINUE AT MINISTRY. The black-and-white image of a tall, ragged-looking man Lily didn't recognize was skulking across the front page.

"You been to any of these trials, Lily?" James asked her as she came into the room. She shook her head. "I went to one yesterday. Hamish Igerson. Nasty fellow. Thought I recognized him from a few WANTED posters."

"Oh," Lily said noncommittally. She crossed to the coffee-pot and poured herself a cup, hoping he would find another topic with which to interest himself. The rustling of papers behind her was not a welcome omen.

She turned to see him turning to the article's continuation. Several more moving pictures were flickering among the tiny, close-set type, and she walked over in a sort of daze. Her eyes moved madly over the pictures, praying she wouldn't see him, but oh no, yes, there he was—

The eyes were glittering up at her.

"I knew I hadn't heard wrong," said James after a few seconds of silence, during which Lily felt her heart hammering. "That radio announcer really did mention old Snivellus, didn't he? I was hoping I'd imagined it. Did you hear it?" he added suddenly.

"Um…I don't really remember…" She wished he would close the paper. The Severus in the picture looked so much like he had in the park, bringing back uncalled-for memories, more sensory than visual.

"You must've…" He stared down at the pages. "Says here his trial is today."

Lily felt a jolt. "_Today_?"

He scanned the type. "It doesn't say anything in particular about him. Just lists him with all the others lined up for trial. Hmm. Maybe the announcer made a mistake." His words were casual, but underneath them Lily could hear a tightness, a carefully controlled excitement, the same thing that was probably causing the muscle in his jaw to go tick-tick-tick before her eyes. "I hope he rots in Azkaban," he said, softly, as though he'd forgotten Lily was listening.

Staring at the paper, she felt a slight flicker of discomfort. Perhaps it _was_ all a mistake. Perhaps the radio announcer really had been mistaken. Perhaps Severus really had never stopped working for Voldemort. Here, sandwiched in amongst Rookwood and Travers and Mulciber, he looked just as much like a Death Eater as anyone ever could. And those eyes…they were dark and cold, with none of the warmth she remembered from that day at the park. Maybe she had imagined that too.

But no, no, never. He hadn't made a move to hurt her. She had been standing before him, surprise rendering her vulnerable, and he had done nothing but talk to her.

And, well, something else too, but that had nothing to do with whether he was a Death Eater…

_Why? Why did I let him kiss me?_

James closed the paper with a sharp flick of his wrist. An innocuous advertisement for Wanda Witch's Soap Scrub replaced the article about Severus.

"Well, I'm going," he said. He looked up at her expectantly, and Lily nearly jumped. The next second she realized he could not, of course, see what she had just been thinking of. And his expression made it clear that he thought she hated Snape as much as he did. He had been there after the Mudblood incident, after all, had been there as she shot Snape dark glances in the halls through the next two years. Had seen the dark simmering anger in her eyes and settled back comfortably, secure in her allegiance to him. But that was four years ago and this was four years later and he had not been there in the park and he could not see inside her head. Could not see what had happened then and what she was feeling now whenever she thought of Severus.

"Do you want to come?" he continued.

Lily's mouth had gone dry. She decided that not coming would look odd. She didn't want to give James a reason to stop looking at her with that familiar, expectant expression. Didn't want his face to turn to suspicion and disbelief—as it would have if he knew what had happened in the park. "I don't have anything else to do."

James's mouth quirked in a smile—except it wasn't a smile, not really. It wasn't something she really wanted to keep looking at, so she turned away, pretending she had been seized with an urgent need for more coffee.

"When he gets locked away," he said, "we'll celebrate. How about that, Lily?"

Her hand tightened around the coffee pot. For the first time, the thought of "celebrating" with James caused her stomach to dip in a not-so-pleasant way. She didn't particularly like the tone of his voice, either. _Does he really think Severus will go to Azkaban?_ That nagging doubt came back…what if he did?_ But James doesn't know Dumbledore will vouch for him. If he knew that…he wouldn't be looking quite so happy right now._

"How about that, Lily?"

"Depends," she said slowly, not turning around.

The anticipation fizzled out of his voice. "What do you mean, depends? You don't really think there'll be anything _not_ to celebrate when the greasy git hears his verdict, do you?"

"You heard his name on the radio, James, and you also heard it mentioned in conjunction with Albus Dumbledore's. What do you think?"

"Lily. I remember that creep at school. He had his nose so far into books of the Dark Arts you'd need an Unsticking Spell to extract them. And did, several times," and as he said this it sounded as though he were smiling. "After the initial Sticking Spell, of course."

Lily rolled her eyes. It wouldn't have surprised her if James was at this very second fantasizing about battling it out with Snape in the Ministry of Magic trial room—using only the hexes and jinxes of his schoolboy glory days, of course. Perhaps he was even now picturing his old foe writhing in the grip of a particularly deadly Leglocker curse.

Lily found that she was imagining the same happening to James, and felt a momentary tinge of guilt.

When she turned around James was still glaring at her. Maybe she had been expected to laugh about the Sticking Spell? But she hadn't felt very close to laughing—not at _that_ image, anyway. But at the picture of James writhing with his legs bound together, and then managing to heave himself upright, only to hop, one-legged, like a demented Easter Bunny, that same glare on his face the whole time…

She couldn't help it. She giggled.

"What's so funny all of a sudden?" James said suspiciously. "Or is this just one of your famous delayed reactions?"

Wait. What? "What's that supposed to mean, delayed reactions?"

"You held out for four years before going out with me in seventh year, Lily," he said. The words seemed to be welling up from some dark place deep inside him. And his scowl was only growing. "And these past two days you've been walking around in a sort of daze, as though something happened to you, like someone switched bodies with you the night You-Know-Who was vanquished or something—"

_The next morning, actually,_ she thought. _But you're close._

"—although it's hardly different from what I've gotten accustomed to, honestly. I didn't know this was what I'd be getting when I married you. Maybe someone should've told me you would get…" He struggled for words. "…dull and boring and distant. Our sex life is almost nonexistent—"

"That's not MY fault!" she shouted, recoiling. "Is it really my fault that you're so busy with work and with the Order that you come home at two in the morning sometimes? Can I help it if I'm asleep by then?"

"That's over, Lily!"—and now he too was nearly bellowing—"that ended on Halloween, I've been coming home _early_ now, you heard Alastor, the fervor'll calm down in a month or so once they've caught all the stragglers, and once all their arses are slammed in Azkaban, you'll have all the time you want with me!"

"I don't want to spend time with you!" she cried. "I'm _sick_ of you!" Even as the words left her mouth she felt like she was playing a role, standing up on a stage, arguing with the actor who was playing her husband but whom she had never seen before in her life, to whom she had no pull. Whom she would be perfectly happy to leave at the end of the production once the lights went down and the audience filed out. Lily had seen her parents argue; she had observed how raw and deep their emotions were, their feelings of betrayal or frustration or despair. Their anger had been magnified by how much they meant to each other; a betrayal of trust always felt worse when it came from someone you loved. She felt none of that now. She felt like she was trying to remember her lines. To school her face into a mask of rage, grief, annoyance—anything to hide the blankness she felt towards this man she had once pledged to love till the end of her days.

"Fine," James snapped. In the flash of his face before he turned away she caught sight of that same pouting look he had worn in the park when she had flinched away from his kiss. He stomped upstairs. "I'm a little sick of you too, Lily. Have fun here by yourself."

She stood here, her hand still clenched on the coffeepot—which, she realized, she had been hefting like a weapon. A few minutes later she heard the front door slam as James departed. She had a feeling this would be one of those nights he had said wouldn't be happening anymore, a night when he came home so late she was already asleep. The house was utterly still around her, but if she strained her ears she fancied she could hear the echoes of their shouts still reverberating against the walls.

Lily came over to the table where the paper was lying, and paged through it carefully until she found the time and place of the trial. It was scheduled for two o'clock at the Ministry, in Courtroom Ten.

_Have fun here by yourself._ James's words had been hard, mocking, utterly fed up.

She went to the trial anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

The Ministry of Magic was busier than Lily had ever seen it. Then again, she hadn't been there for months upon months. In the last half-year before Halloween, it had become less of a hub than a center for hysteria and despair. Now the wizards and witches rushing in and out of the entrance seemed just as harried as they had before, but with a feeling of victory about them. It was the triumphant sort of haggardness, rather than the exhausted sort.

There were at least two hundred people in Courtoom Ten. In the center of the room was a chair with chains resting on the arms. The sight of it made Lily feel cold.

She looked around the room and glimpsed James within seconds—and, to her surprise, Sirius was sitting next to him. Instinctively she shrank down further into her seat—she hadn't cast a Concealment charm on herself, so all she had to diguise herself was her cloak. She had pushed her hair back, hoping it wouldn't catch the gleam of the light and thus James's attention. She told herself she had forgone the Concealment charm because it was too much trouble and might backfire, but underneath that, she knew the real one: she didn't want Severus to be looking up at the spectators and the Wizengamot and see only the sneering faces of James and Sirius and Merlin knew who else. Even if Dumbledore _did_ come to his defense. Something in her wanted Severus to be looking up and glimpse her, too, to know that she hadn't wiped that day in the park from her memory.

Alastor Moody was sitting just a few benches down from James and Sirius, but didn't seem to have seen them. His grizzled features seemed carved out of stone, his eyes fixed on the door. People were whispering but over it all there seemed to be laid a sort of hush.

James leaned over in Lily's direction to hiss something to Sirius, and it took her a few seconds for her to realize she was holding her breath. Well, it wasn't a crime to go to the trial, for Merlin's sake. James had even _invited_ her to come. But strangely, to go on her own felt like sneaking around.

Even though it wasn't. It _wasn't_. She sat there, trying to convince herself, and then the door opened and Severus entered.

He was flanked by two dementors and looked much paler than he had in the park. It was probably a combination of the cold lighting of the room and the dementors' chill, which had just caused the temperature to drop several degrees. The spectators sitting on the benches drew slightly closer together as the dark figures approached the chair. Lily caught a glimpse of the one of the dementors' hands; the flesh was scabbed and slimy looking, as though it would slough off if touched, and she sucked in a breath.

The dementors escorted Severus to the chair and then glided silently out of the room. But the temperature remained low, the tension crackling like ice.

"Severus Snape," came a curt voice from the center bench, directly in front of Severus. Severus stared back levelly at him, his gaze dark and steady, though Lily could see how hard his jaw was clenched. Maybe he had already seen Sirius and James. "You have been brought here before the Council of Magical Law in order for judgment to be passed. You stand accused of being a Death Eater and of participating in activies intended to terrorize the wizarding and non-wizarding community and increase the power of your master, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named…" Crouch took a deep breath, as he had said all this at once. "Do you have anything to add to your testimony before we pronounce judgment?"

Severus shook his head sharply, but not before he had glanced upwards again, at the benches. Lily chanced a look in the same direction and saw what she had been dreading: looks of triumph suffusing James's and Sirius's faces. Except, no, she realized; that wasn't entirely it. Triumph was clear on Sirius's face, but on James's, she thought she saw a little bit of relief mixed in.

"Does any member of this court have anything to say in the defense of the accused?" Crouch sounded almost bored, as if he expected no answer at all. He didn't even look round until someone cleared his throat. Lily looked to her left to see Albus Dumbledore, clad in sparkling blue robes, rising to his feet.

Slowly, her hands relaxed their iron grip on her own robes. She had barely been aware she was clutching the fabric so tightly.

"I, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, do. Severus Snape is, for all intents and purposes, innocent of the charges that have been brought against him."

James looked as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Sirius's mouth had actually dropped open.

"Are you suggesting this man isn't a Death Eater?" Crouch's tone was skeptical. He pointed at Severus with his wand for emphasis. His voice rose with each word. "This man who has been accused of Death Eater activies with eyewitnesses aplenty, who was a member of that clique of students we now know were formed entirely of Death Eaters in training, who—even you, Dumbledore, can't disprove this—has a Dark Mark tattooed on his very forearm?" He panted, triumphant.

"He certainly does," Dumbledore replied calmly. "Because he was indeed a Death Eater. But as there is no way to remove the Dark Mark when one ceases to be a Death Eater, you will find that to be insufficient proof of his continued place in their ranks."

"You claim he has ceased to be a Death Eater?" Crouch glanced at Severus, whose mask-like expression had not changed, and then back to Dumbledore. Lily kept trying to catch Severus's eyes but he didn't seem to see her. "On what evidence, Dumbledore?"

"On my own," Dumbledore answered. "Severus Snape has been working as a spy for the Order for the past two months. His involvement has up till now been a secret between him and myself."

"Oh?" Crouch still seemed skeptical. "Just between you and him, then? You are the sole defender? And how do we know he hasn't bewitched you or Imperiused you, Dumbledore?"

There were a few gasps of shock from around the room; clearly Dumbledore had many supporters. "How dare you," someone hissed from a few seats behind Lily.

The Professor himself showed no visible signs of anger, but his eyes flashed a steely blue, and his next words were flint-like as they rang in the hollowed-out room. "Are you suggesting that I have allowed myself to be Imperiused by my own former student, a man not twenty-two years old? I don't mean to inflate my own sense of self-importance, but really, Barty, surely we have better things to debate here than the relative magical skill between him and myself."

Crouch seemed lost for words.

"Severus Snape is no more a Death Eater than I am," Dumbledore continued. "If anyone still has doubts, I have memories upon memories to share with the jury, detailing his reports of Lord Voldemort's plans, and the subsequent victories of the Order upon those reports. Would you like to make use of the Penseive?"

Crouch, who had started violently at Voldemort's name, straightened his glasses. "I am not saying that will be necessary," he muttered. "We have a lot of trials to be getting on with…others who stand accused…others who are even now being brought in…"

Dumbledore inclined his head. "Then I suggest we put the vote to the jury."

"Very well." Crouch cleared his throat sharply, and turned back to the right-hand side of the room. "The jury will have one minute in which to confer."

There was a flurry of whispered confrontation amongst the wizards and witches of the jury. But the time seemed to Lily to stretch out as her hands twisted in her lap, as she looked once again down at Severus—and he looked back at her. An expression of shock flashed momentarily across his face, before he schooled it again. But he had seen her—he was still looking at her with a new emotion she couldn't place—and his eyes were maybe not quite so cold—

"The jury will now raise their hands. Those in favor of imprisonment…"

Lily held her breath. James and Sirius held theirs. Three hands out of twelve were raised.

She pressed her hands to her mouth and then took them away, conscious of looking too relieved, then conscious of not looking relieved enough. What she felt like doing was whooping.

Alastor Moody was looking from the jury back to Snape with a suspicious expression, his eyes narrowed in dislike. Sirius's mouth was still open.

"Very well," Crouch repeated. He sounded worn out. "Court adjourned."

There was the sound of two hundred people rising to their feet, and Lily's view of the chair was obscured by the backs of those in front of her. She knew that she needed to get out of there before James saw her, or she would have to face some very uncomfortable questions she wasn't in the mood to answer. She moved quickly, glancing back only once to see James securely ensconced between a fat witch and a heavily mustachioed wizard.

But by the time she had reached the floor, Severus was gone.

Lily hurried through the door ahead of most of the spectators, many of whom had paused to speak amongst themselves. The dementors had disappeared, much to her relief.

She told herself the reason she was rushing was to avoid James and Sirius, but there was a deeper reason, too—less of escaping those behind her than catching up to someone ahead. The hall outside Courtoom Ten was dark and empty, but she thought she caught sight of a cloak whipping out of sight behind a corner. It was in the opposite direction from the way back to the Atrium. "Wait!" she called, hoping James wouldn't hear her voice over the noise of the pack of people he was currently caught in.

She hurried down the hall, where she turned the corner, to be faced with a flight of stairs. Severus had paused on the second step, his face mostly in darkness. From behind her she could hear the noise of the crowd growing fainter as they trickled the other way, up the other staircase. She could hear her own breathing, feel the pulse thrumming in her chest. For a moment, staring up at the shadowed silent face, she almost thought she had imagined that day in the park.

Then Severus stepped down into the light, and she knew she hadn't. Something hot shot through her stomach as her eyes met his. It had been four days since then but she seemed to have stepped right back there, as if the two of them had stood frozen in time with only the scenery changing around them: trees melting into stone walls, weak sunlight fading into the dim torchlight that was now flickering across his features.

"I'm so glad," she said. "I knew you were telling the truth, I knew it, I'm so glad you got off."

"I trust Albus Dumbledore," he said, smiling a little. Had that been relief she had seen in his face then, when he'd seen her in the courtoom? "He could have told Crouch earlier, though. It would have saved him something of a shock."

"James and Sirius, too," she said before she could stop herself. Then, at the slight frown that crossed his face, she found herself saying truthfully, "Merlin, Severus, I'm just so sick of them. ..._Him."_

"Then why don't you leave him?"

_The prophecy will still play itself out,_ a voice inside him whispered. _She'll still have the baby, you know it, you heard the sibyll say it. _

Lily looked quickly around, as if expecting to see James right behind her. "I…" she began. It was the last thing she had expected Severus to say. Even he looked surprised at his own boldness.

"Do you love him?" He was staring at her like he could make her say no. The gash on his neck was black in the near-darkness.

"I'm not sure," she said slowly. "But I don't think the feelings I had for him several years ago ever changed."

_So you do,_ he thought, almost vindictively, although it was himself he was angry with. _I should have known. She kissed you, Severus, or rather you kissed her. She didn't propose marriage to you, for Merlin's sake. She's probably convinced herself she dreamed it, anyway._

He was so busy mentally reprimanding himself that he almost missed her next, whispered sentence, so quiet it was barely audible: "I don't think I ever did love him in the first place."


	8. Chapter 8

"Will you see me again?" He didn't know whether this was a follow-up to what Lily had just said or a stand-alone question that had just popped into his mind.

"I'd like that," she said. He got the impression she was trying not to think too hard about what she was doing. "Other than Order business, I don't have too much else going on, so any time you want to meet…" She trailed off.

"Soon. But," he added grimly, "I'm going to have some Order business to attend to myself in the next couple of days. I'll have a lot of explaining to do." From the expressions on Potter's and Black's faces, he had the feeling Dumbledore hadn't briefed any of the other Order members on what he was going to do at the trial. Maybe Alastor Moody—by the time Severus had managed to pick out his face amongst the crowd, the verdict had been settled, and he hadn't looked shocked so much as skeptical. But the others…

"Right." She seemed suddenly to brighten. "Does that mean that until today, Dumbledore and myself were the only ones who knew of your involvement with the Order?"

"It seems that way."

She smiled a bit more. "And you trusted me not to tell?"

"I still know you a little bit, Lily."

But did he? She had married James Potter, the man he hated more than any other in the world. Any sensible man in his place would have turned tail and fled by now. Lily's expression, though, brought him directly back to that blustery day in the park. Maybe it was the sparkle in her eyes. He remembered the warmth of her body against his, the feel of her mouth, and deep in the pit of his stomach that unquenchable unbearable longing surfaced again.

"I should hope so." She had come closer, risen onto the step he was standing on.

He said nothing; only his eyes moved, flickering from her face to the bottom of the stairwell.

She came up another step, so that now their heads were exactly even.

This time it was not he who leaned forward but she, pressing her lips to his, and this time the heat that flashed through her belly was unmistakable. He responded instantly, his mouth warmer than she had expected in the chill of the staircase.

_What am I doing kissing Severus Snape in a darkened staircase in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic,_ she thought hazily, even as one of his hands found its way to the back of her head. _What am I doing…_ But she let this thought trickle out of her mind.

And then something changed. The grip of his hand tightened in her hair and now he was pressing her head back against the wall so that the stone scraped her shoulders. The longing had turned to hunger. Something in her leapt with an excitement she hadn't felt for years, and she kissed him back hard, so hard it almost hurt, her heartbeat drumming in her ears—

"Severus!"

Severus jerked back, eyes wide. For a second Lily assumed the worst—but of course it wasn't James. The voice had belonged to Albus Dumbledore. Severus stepped back and down to the bottom of the stairwell, looking to the left, where the shout had come from. Presently there was the sound of footsteps. Lily pressed herself back against the wall, praying she would blend into the darkness, though she knew it was Severus who had that gift.

Dumbledore was coming down the hall, his wand out, casting _Lumos._

"Yes?" Severus responded shortly. _Curse the man._ He hoped he didn't look too flushed or disarrayed.

"Your presence is needed at Order Headquarters. Unless you've got something better to do." He glanced around the corridor but mercifully stopped short of the staircase. "Although I don't know what you could possibly be doing in these shadows. Darker than my Aunt Bertha's kitchen in here. Which must explain why she was never the best cook," he added. "In fact, dinner with her held many similarities to the Muggle game of Russian roulette, which is why we seldom went."

Severus sighed. "Am I to expect the pleasure of a round-table interrogation with every single Order member?" _Other than Lily._

"Nothing quite so bad as that, Severus. Just myself and Minerva. Concerning that teaching position at Hogwarts you asked for." Dumbledore smiled.

He resisted the urge to glance backwards at the entrance to the stairwell. This sentence, coming from Dumbledore a week ago, would have given him great excitement. But now, compared to what had just occurred in the shadows behind him, it was almost nothing.

"I would like that," he said, realizing he was echoing Lily's words as he spoke. "That would make me very happy."

But not as happy as he had felt only minutes ago, a happiness he hadn't believed was still possible for him.

After she heard Severus leave with Dumbledore, she only waited until she heard their footsteps fade before she darted out of the stairwell. She hurried quickly up the other staircase to the Atrium, where there were still people milling about.

She had gotten no more than several feet when a shout caught her attention. "Lily! Wait up!"

_Wonderful._

She turned to see James, Sirius and Remus hurrying towards her across the Atrium. It was Remus who had spoken. James looked almost speechless with rage, which tempered somewhat when he saw her.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "Thought you were staying home."

"I decided to come. I looked for you," she added truthfully. She didn't add that upon seeing him she had stayed firmly in her seat.

"Can you believe this?" he continued, but he had turned to Sirius. From Remus's weary expression, this was not the first time he was hearing these words. "Snivellus. SNIVELLUS! The slimy little…Dark Arts-loving…greasy…" Words failed him at this point.

"We tried to catch up with Dumbledore outside the courtroom, but the man moves too damn fast," Sirius said, looking disgruntled. "I swear he was the first one out of there. Nice to see you again, Lily," he added. "Although I'd hoped it might be under better circumstances. Such as a guilty verdict."

"How?" James croaked. He seemed to have missed everything Sirius had just said.

"Well," Remus replied, looking uncomfortable in his newfound diplomacy, "apparently he's on our side. Dumbledore probably never told us for Snape's own protection."

"His protection," Sirius repeated derisively.

_Severus would hate that,_ Lily thought. She knew that turning spy for the Order must have carried a great risk with it. He had always hated looking weak, dependent on the protection of others—probably one of the reasons he had grimly continued to do battle with the Marauders by himself in fifth and sixth year, never asking for help from the Slytherins he occasionally associated with, though it was four against one.

"Snape's up to something. I know he is." James's jaw was tight as he bit the words out. "I know he is. Those idiots should have thrown him straight to the dementors."

"I hate the git as much as anyone," Remus said, looking over at his friend. "But if Albus Dumbledore trusts him…"

"Once a Death Eater, always a Death Eater," James snapped. "So _apparently_ he's working for us now. _Apparently_ Dumbledore believes anything he says. _Apparently_ he switched sides months ago—hah! Convenient. Very convenient."

"How many times can one person say 'apparently,' James?" Lily asked.

"Don't tell me you believe this!" He turned his glare on her. "But you had faith in him from the very start, if I remember correctly."

"I was only reminding you of what we heard," she said. "Do you believe now that we weren't both having the same auditory hallucination, or that the announcer said Se—Snape's name for absolutely no reason at all?"

"We heard the radio," James explained as Sirius opened his mouth in confusion. "One of the stations mentioned that our dear old friend Snivellus was working for Dumbledore at the time of You-Know-Who's defeat." He was still looking at her, though, his eyes narrowed at her near-slip. She stared solidly back. Remus and Sirius were both glancing back and forth between them and then away, as if they didn't quite know where to look, or how to speak to these two strangers who had once been their friends.

* * *

James didn't come home that night. Lily waited up by the fire, turning pages of a book without really reading them. After a few hours she gave up and went to bed.

She awoke in the cold milky dawn. Again, Severus's face was in her mind when she opened her eyes. The bed beside her was empty, but she could have sworn she heard someone come in sometime during the night.

When she went downstairs, she had her answer: James had decided to sleep on the couch. She came closer, though it only brought her within sight of what she had dreaded. An empty bottle lay overturned on the rug. Another had rolled under the sofa, the glass catching the faint light filtering through the curtains. It looked like it was winking at her.

Beneath his lopsided glasses, James's face was smooth and relaxed. It looked like he hadn't aged at all since sixteen. He might have been only a day older than the same boy she'd known at Hogwarts, the same one who had catcalled out at her across the Great Lawn—some would say flatteringly, but she hadn't thought so then. The same man who had mocked a number of her friends to their faces while she had sat there mute, resolutely ignoring him, afraid of speaking up in case he decided he didn't like her quite so much anymore? In case his admiration of her changed to derision?

Funny that it had worked out the other way around. She no longer felt the same reluctant awe of him she had as a teenager. And, even as she stood here, something very like derision was taking its place.

And more and more often she found herself thinking of Severus.

Was it so wrong to feel this way about a childhood friend, a man who wasn't her husband? Lily wondered as she brought her fist up to her heart. A man she had sworn, years ago, never to talk to or even look at again?

Yes, yes it was wrong. She _knew_ that.

She walked over quietly to where James was lying on the couch, his feet hanging off the end. Stood for a while there in the cold gray gloom.

But it didn't feel wrong.


	9. Chapter 9

James didn't reach full consciousness until almost noon, when they received an owl alerting them of an Order meeting later that same day. As Lily read the message, she remembered that neither she nor Severus had mentioned any precise time or place they would meet. But with this meeting…she scanned the venue: Dumbledore's office. With this meeting it was unlikely that they would miss each other. As Severus's involvement with the Order was no longer a secret, he would probably be present.

Along with her—and James, she realized. All sitting in the same room. Together.

Her insides quailed at the thought. Back in the Atrium, had James's eyes just been narrowed in dislike for his old enemy, or had he actually noticed her slip? If he had, she hoped he would just think it was the memory of an old friendship, and not a more recent…something else…that had caused it.

Although that might make it easier.

_Make what easier?_ Lily asked herself later. She was sitting at the table of Albus Dumbledore's office, the venue they had chosen for their meeting. The other members of the Order, including Dedalus Diggle, Elphias Dodge, Alastor Moody, and Emmeline Vance, were also there.

And, of course, Severus Snape.

Everyone present in the room had also been there at his trial. So, though there had been some muttering when he first swept in, it had quieted down after a few minutes. Lily saw Alastor Moody's face settle into the same expression he had worn during the trial, though, glaring at Severus with intense dislike.

There were gaps at the table where several of their number had formerly sat, including Caradoc Dearborn, Peter Pettigrew, Benjy Fenwick, Edgar Bones, and of course Frank and Alice Longbottom. Lily looked around the table, noting the distance between the remaining Order members, her throat tightening.

She was flanked, thankfully, by Minerva McGonagall and Rubeus Hagrid; she didn't know if she could have borne sitting next to James. He was seated across the table from her, his hair even messier than usual, and was refusing to meet her gaze. The only words they had exchanged after his sleep on the couch had been "What time is it?" "Time for the Order meeting. Clean yourself up." She hoped it was her imagination, but she thought she could smell the booze reeking out of his pores.

No one else seemed to have noticed, or at least they weren't making a big deal out of it if they had. Thank Merlin. The overall mood in the room was brighter than Lily could remember it ever being. Emmeline Vance was asking Dedalus Diggle about his shooting stars, and wouldn't they have attracted unwanted Mugle attention—but in a friendly, jovial tone. Reubus Hagrid was in the middle of recounting the flight with Neville to his grandmother's house, his ruddy cheeks flushed with pride. Those sitting to his right were listening intently and respectfully. Lily got the sense that this wasn't something that happened often for him, and James's words on Halloween floated back to her: _"You mean they trusted that blundering giant with a baby?"_ Her skin prickled with anger.

Lily remembered how Order meetings had gone before Halloween in this same room: how they had spoken in hushed voices underneath the pale, frightened silence of the portraits, glancing at the window every so often. They hadn't been able to help it. But now their voices weren't hushed at all, and even the former Headmasters and Headmistresses of Hogwarts were talking energetically amongst themselves, their former expressions of despair and doom now replaced with cautious relief.

Lily tried to feel the same way, but she was excruciatingly aware of the game of vitual pass-the-parcel she was playing with two other men in the room. She glanced at James, who glanced at Severus, who glanced at her. And then the same thing would repeat less than a minute later. Merlin's beard. This was going to be torturous.

As soon as the door closed behind Dumbledore, a hush fell over the room. The cheerful mood faded away at the expression in the old wizard's eyes. They were not twinkling; they were solemn and grave. From his face they could have been in the midst of the war itself, and Halloween, and the days that followed, could have been only a dream.

Lily felt a fist of fear clench in her stomach.

"I trust everyone in this room knows that the Longbottoms' location was meant to have been kept secret," Dumbledore began.

Some of the Order nodded; some just looked at him with intent and worried faces. Severus's expression didn't change. He knew what the Headmaster was about to say, and he couldn't help himself from looking over at Black and Potter.

"I myself suggested they get themselves a Secret-Keeper," he continued. "The choice of which turned out to be foolhardy in the extreme. He betrayed them. He told Voldemort where they were, effectively sentencing them to death and rendering Neville Longbottom an orphan. He is the reason the child now wears a scar on his forehead. He is, unfortunately, someone we all know. It pains me greatly to tell you that the Secret-Keeper was Peter Pettigrew."

There was a long silence. No one spoke. Then, from Lily's left: "No, it can't be…" She turned to see it had been McGonagall who had said this, but she had never heard the formidable woman's voice so thin and weak. One hand was pressed to her mouth.

On the other side of the room, Sirius was shaking his head like a dog trying to dry itself off. "Impossible," he gulped. "I spoke to him just two days before Halloween. It can't be…you must have the wrong man…" Even as he said it, his expression was changing from disbelief to disgust, as though he had felt a spider crawl across his cheek.

Lily remembered how Pettigrew's face had changed slowly over the years, moving from the slight mouselike twitch she had seen on the first-year to the adult's unmistakable and disturbing resemblance to a rat. The features had grown pointed, the teeth and nails yellowed. But if someone had suggested he was up to no good, she would have pictured him slinking around a bar somewhere, trying to trick people out of their money. Her mind's eye would not have gone immediately to Voldemort. She realized her throat was entirely dry. _So this is the kind of person my husband once called a friend,_ she thought dully. _And we all called a fellow Order member. _

When Severus had discovered Pettigrew's involvement, he hadn't been quite as shocked. His experience with Peter Pettigrew had made it easier for him to see the grotesqueness lurking inside the man's head. Pettigrew had always been drawn to power, of all kinds, no matter how cruelly it was being used—in fact, the more cruelly, the better. Which explained why he had moved from licking the feet of James Potter, star of the Quidditch pitch, to kneeling at the robes of the Dark Lord.

"I am sorry to say that we don't," Dumbledore answered Sirius heavily. "The evidence is undisputable. Pettigrew himself confessed. He is now in Azkaban, awaiting trial."

"I hope he rots there," Hagrid growled, looking more furious than Lily had ever seen him. His black eyes glared out above the wild tangle of his beard. "The dirty bugger took the lives of a pair o' the best wizards and witches of their age. Frank an' Alice wouldn't have 'urt a fly. Yeh're damned right he's in Azkaban. We shoulda known there was summat wrong with him. Even _looked_ like a damned rat."

"Unfortunately, Pettigrew was an accomplished Occlumens. I have only myself to blame for this."

"Are yeh nuts?" Hagrid burst out. McGonagall inhaled sharply. "It was _him_ 'oo betrayed Frank an' Alice! Not you!"

"I appreciate your loyalty, Rubeus," Dumbledore said. "And, sadly, I deserve it far less than you make it seem. As head of the Order, I should have been far more careful when it came to trusting people…especially those who had never done anything to gain our trust in the first place." It might have been Severus's imagination, but did Dumbledore glance for a moment at him as he said this last? As if to reassure Severus that he, unlike Pettigrew, _had_ proven his trustworthiness through his deeds and not through an old schoolboy friendship with a couple of Order members.

"So we should count ourselves lucky he confessed?" Moody growled. "Even if we can't read their minds, vigilance is the best defense against traitors like that. Maybe we should start with weeding out everyone else who looks like a rat. And just make sure we don't have any other vipers in our bosom." He followed this with a pointed, unmistakable look at Severus.

And though nothing more dramatic than that happened during the meeting, Severus found himself trying to avoid both James's and Moody's gazes. Even though it made him feel like a coward. And every so often he would look at Lily, and saw how she would glance nervously at her husband to make sure he hadn't noticed, and Severus would inwardly curse himself and stare back down at his hands. They were clenched together where they rested on the table, white-knuckled and skeletal against the dark mahogany wood.

"Couldn't you have cleaned yourself up for the meeting?" Lily began the moment she and James had gotten out of earshot of the room. She ducked into a narrow alcove off the corridor, which ended in a narrow window that looked out over the grounds. James followed, looking disgruntled. "You could have at least _pretended_ not to have a hangover."

"Oh, come off it, Lily," he retorted. "You saw the state of everyone in there. They were practically celebrating. There's no need to be as…on top of things as before. You-Know-Who is gone, and you heard Alastor—we're rounding up more of his supporters by the day."

"Then there's no more need for you to keep drinking! Not that there ever was in the first place."

Something in his face turned ugly. "Doesn't matter—it's not the stress of the war. For the most part the war is gone, but _you're_ still around."

Lily sucked in a breath. She remembered him saying, years ago, that all he needed was to have her near him to feel like everything was perfect. Apparently, that had changed.

"So that's how it is," she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. She didn't know why this particular delcaration had rocked her so much—she'd heard things just as bad from James over the past few days—but maybe it was the fact that it might actually be true. "Then I suppose you won't mind if I don't accompany you back to the house. Maybe I'll just gather my things and take a little break. Or maybe a bit of a longer one."

James frowned as he considered this. "Lily, I—"

"What?" she demanded. "Realizing that your chances of a good shag go out the window the moment I leave? Or at least an excuse for drowning yourself in alcohol?"

"Lily, damn it." He made a grab for her arm but she dodged away.

"If you'd just stop drinking!" But what, really, would that change? Would she want to be with him then, and not Severus? She doubted it.

There was a long silence. And then, in a tired voice, James said the last thing she'd expected: "I can't."

And then, in desperation: "I'm not young anymore!"

"What?" Lily stepped backwards in shock. Whatever she had expected to hear, it wasn't this. "James, you're barely over twenty."

"You don't understand. I can't…I took my broom out of the cupboard the other day and went down to the fields by the river. I brought my old Snitch with me. I couldn't…I couldn't catch it as well as before, and eventually it got away." He was shaking his head as though in disbelief. "I'm going to seed."

"James—" She had been about to say _Only great Quidditch players like Ludo Bagman can "go to seed", _but decided it would sound too cold. "You're being ridiculous."

He frowned. "Ridiculous, am I? I didn't look so ridiculous when I was on the Quidditch pitch back at school, did I? What about my performance during the last game against Ravenclaw—that wasn't ridiculous, was it? Not from your reaction. So…what happened to that?"

From James's words she must have flung herself on him, but she couldn't quite remember the game he was talking about.

"But now it's not the same. Now you're _here,_ and it's all done already, it's all so easy, there's no challenge or sport in anything anymore—"

An inkling of understanding began to grow in Lily. "No _sport_?" she repeated incredulously. "Is that what it was, James? It was just sport, chasing after me all those years? Maybe when we were fourteen or so, all right—but later? What, up till the time we got married it was all just a game?"

"What—no, no, it's just…" He wasn't meeting her eyes, looking lost. He ran a hand through his messy hair again, which Lily had once thought endearing but now found simply annoying. "You never look at me the way you did then…"

Lily tried to remember how she might have appeared while watching James as a seventeen-year-old, back at Hogwarts, maybe from across the castle grounds. She hated to think it, but, underneath the disdain and disgust at his arrogance, hadn't she felt some grudging awe? At the way he always had a crowd of admirers gathered around him, the way his friends looked up to him and sought his approval—and above all the ease with which he handled it, as though he were used to it, as though it were no big deal. Lily had never been able to have that sort of nonchalance. At one point her friend Mary had asked her for help in Potions—assuming, incorrectly, like Slughorn, that Lily was performing merely based on her own skill and not Severus's coaching—and Lily had felt uncomfortable at Mary's undisguised admiration for her. And not just because she wasn't as good at Potions as she appeared to be, either. The very expression of wonder in Mary's eyes as she went on and on about Lily's incredible Potions skill had made prickles of awkwardness break out over her skin. How did James stand it, all day, every day, without batting an eye?

Now, of course, she didn't look at James that way. What was there to admire about a man who dragged himself to Order meetings with a hangover, who seemed not to care about her feelings at all? The teenager with the cocky grin and the incredible Quidditch skills was gone, and now Lily was only repulsed by the way she had felt towards him then. So he had been accustomed to adulation. To people hanging on his every word. So what? How exactly did that make him worth worshipping, again?

"James…" she began. Trying to think of how to say this. "Maybe I don't look at you that way anymore because I don't feel that way anymore. Things have changed. We're not kids anymore."

He rolled his eyes. "Merlin, I knew you'd come up with something trite like that."

"It's the truth!"

"I know we're not kids anymore, Lily! But a man can't just go on, pretending like nothing's changed…" The look of defeat on his face should have stirred something deep inside Lily, but she didn't feel anything. Other than maybe a slight touch of pity—but it was distant, the sort of thing she might feel for a lost dog. Or a turtle.

"So you admit things have changed," she said. Well, at least he was making it easy for her. "Maybe we should take a break, then."

James stared at the floor. Several different expressions crossed his face. Shock and desperation and anger and finally a sort of blankness.

"Hello? James?" Maybe a bit juvenile, but then again, he wasn't exactly setting a shining example.

He raised his head and said calmly: "Well, let's go home, then." As though the last minute of conversation hadn't happened.

"Did you not hear what I just said? James, I'm serious. I don't know if this is good for either of us."

"You need to lie down, Lily," he answered, reaching to take her hand. She snatched it away. "You're just a bit excited is all. Well, I am too. No one ever thought it would be…him. It was a huge shock. You don't know what you're saying."

What was he doing? Why was he speaking to her in that placating, soothing voice?

"You should go home, James."

"Yeah, and you're coming," and his voice wasn't quite so calm. "Come on, Lily, don't be stupid. There's no where else you can go anyway."

"No," she said, and this time she drew her wand.

"Is there a problem?"

The cold voice came from behind Lily, and she turned to see Severus—this was becoming something of a déjà vu occurrence for her—standing at the entrance of the alcove. He was looking past her at James. The pure hatred in his eyes made her stomach twist. Glancing back at her husband, she saw the shock and then the anger that suffused his face, turning it a dark puce.

"Stay out of this, _Snivellus,"_ he growled.

"Maybe you miscalculated, but your companions don't seem to be here to back you up," Severus responded, his eyes glinting. "I'll give you a moment to run and fetch them before turning on me—although you may find yourself short one. You want to be careful how you pick your friends, Potter." He spat the name like a curse word.

"_You're _talking to _me_ about choosing friends? How ironic!" He snorted. "You were just rubbing shoulders with him a few days ago. Just because you've managed to dumbfound the whole Order doesn't mean _I've_ been fooled." He probably thought his haughty tone and pushed-out chest made him look heroic and grand, but Lily found the result rather silly.

Severus smiled. "Ever the Quidditch star in your youth, you now aspire to be the brightest Snitch in the box," he almost purred, though with a malicious gleam in his eye, "able to deduce the truth when Albus Dumbledore and every other member of the Order have somehow been blinded to it. Tell me, do you really think Dumbledore would have allowed me into the Order if I hadn't proven my loyalty to him beyond the shadow of a doubt?"

Somehow, Lily realized, he had managed to cut straight to the heart of James's present thoughts and feelings, speaking of her husband's youth in a manner eerily reminiscent of the way he had just done. Judging by James's current expression, the prospect of being the "brightest Snitch in the box" had just lost some of its appeal, thanks to the sarcasm dripping from Severus's voice.

"By all means, run along to your elders and tell them I'm a traitor," he continued. "What would that make me, not a double but a triple agent? And what is your proof? The only word you might have to go on is that of your old friend—but then again I wouldn't go around calling him a friend for too much longer if I were you."

That was enough for James. He whipped out his wand; Severus parried his hex and returned with one of his own, which James had to hop backwards to avoid.

"Stop!" Lily shouted, and dived between them, almost spreading her arms but then deciding that this would be too dramatic. She felt like she was back on the Hogwarts grounds, watching one of many altercations between the two of them—only now her loyalty was supposed to lie with her husband, who was glaring at her and jerking his chin to the side. His message could not have been clearer: _Get out of the way so I can hex him._

"A bit out of practice, are we?" Severus said to James. "Didn't think you'd be using your old Quidditch moves to avoid spells. Then again, I suppose you'd snatch at any chance to relive your glory days, distant as they are."

James hissed another spell that barely missed Lily; she ducked instinctively and felt it singe her hair as it passed.

Severus's face contorted. Lily heard the sound of footsteps from further down the hall. The last thing she wanted was for McGonagall or someone else from the Order to break up the fight and admonish them like naughty schoolchildren. "Stop it, both of you," she said. "Someone's coming."

Still glaring at each other, the two of them slowly lowered their wands. James's hand was trembling, Lily noticed.

The footsteps turned out to belong to Emmeline Vance, who glanced curiously into their little alcove with surprise as she continued along the corridor.

"Classes will be out soon," Lily reminded them. Right now the corridor was deserted, but she had no desire for the entire Hogwarts student body to witness a slugging-out for domination between the two men.

"Whatever," James said. "Come on, then. Let's go." He brushed past Lily, heading out into the corridor, then turned when she didn't follow. "What are you waiting for? Come on!"

"Have you heard nothing I've said in the past five minutes?" she snapped. "I'm not coming. Except maybe to pack some things before I leave."

"Oh? Where will you go?" He fixed her with a look that was meant to be condescending, but beneath it, barely concealed, was bubbling rage. "Your mum and dad's place? Nice, Lil. Really moving up in the world, aren't you. You little bitch."

"Don't call me a bitch." She began walking in the other direction, down the corridor. She concentrated on not looking at Severus as she passed him. A few of the portraits on the walls were looking in their direction—_don't they have anything better to do than eavesdrop on us—_

"Don't act like one then," James said, following her just as quickly. She spun to face him, and in one smooth movement he knocked her wand out of her hand. Her mouth dropped open.

Just as Severus's spell hit James in the center of his back.


	10. Chapter 10

James crumpled to the floor. A neat Stunning, Severus observed. He usually disliked attacking people from behind, but with Potter, the usual rules of honor didn't apply. Whenever they had faced each other over the years, both men had trampled them into the ground and then dug them up to desecrate them again.

"You all right?" Severus asked Lily. Her eyes were still wide with surprise as she looked down at the unconscious form of her husband.

"Yeah. What an ass. Him, not you," she added.

There was a twitch of his mouth that might have been a smile. He stepped over the form lying on the floor, and the smile disappeared as he looked down at it. "Did you say you were leaving?" he asked her, as much to take his mind off the curses he would like to test out on Potter as to know the answer.

"Well…yeah. We've been having problems lately, to put it lightly." She sighed. "Honestly, I wish I'd never married him." _I managed to say it. I actually managed to say it._

"I'd love to hex him into oblivion," he said softly. "In fact I still might."

"Please don't. Then I might lose my respect for you." _What are we doing? _

"You respect me? Well, that makes one person." Underneath his light tone there was not a little bitterness.

"Severus."

He looked up at her. His eyes were dark pools, pulling her in, making her heart jog in her chest.

"Can I…" The words pressed themselves out of her mouth before they had even fully crossed her mind. "Can I stay with you?"

A few seconds of silence passed before he said, disparagingly, "You know where I live, Lily." As if he couldn't quite believe that he was saying it, that she had just asked this of him. And something in his face seemed to have closed down.

_ I'm not trying to take advantage of how you feel about me._ _I know I would probably have done that before, back when I was the same teenager who admired James Potter on the Quidditch pitch, and I'm so sorry._ This was what Lily thought but couldn't bring herself to say. She could only manage: "I—I'm not throwing myself on your mercy. I wouldn't be homeless. I could kick James out of the house. But honestly…I don't feel comfortable there anymore. There are too many ghosts." She remembered James carrying her across the threshold when they first moved in, and suppressed a shudder. At the time she had been overwhelmed with the sight of the inside of their new home, not even glancing back at James. But if she had thought to look at his face, what would she have seen there? Joy and love, or the delight of a dragon who had just stumbled on a new cache of gold?

She didn't see anything like that in Severus's expression now. Just incredulous disbelief. And that same guarded aspect.

"Are you sure there wouldn't be too many ghosts with me, Lily?"

"Is this really—" The words caught in her throat. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation right now."

"Well, we'd better hurry up with it," he said, glancing back behind him—showing that scar, the line that glared redly in the harsh light—"because you were correct. Classes'll be out soon."

_This isn't right_, she realized, her heart sinking at the way his tone was now cold, removed. _I should never have asked to stay with him. Not after I just told James I was leaving. What an idiot I am. Severus probably thinks he's just a place for me to crash while my marriage scabs over._ She glaced back down at James, frowning with concern, but not at her husband. Her thoughts were still with Severus.

"We can't just leave him here," Severus said grudgingly. Although he would dearly have liked to see how many similarities there were between Hogwarts students leaving classes and a stampeding herd of hippogriffs.

Looking at Lily now, as she gazed down at her husband, he seemed to have stepped back in time. For the first time in years they were both back in the light of the school corridor, amongst the portraits that were frozen in time. This was very different from seeing her in the park or even back at the Ministry. Now it was easy to picture her as the sixth-year who had resolutely avoided his gaze for months on end. And then the seventh-year he had eventually seen on the arm of James Potter, gazing adoringly up at him like the rest of the students. Somehow, he had never thought she would be one of them. But she had hung onto his every word just like them, once even reaching up to mess up his adorably untidy hair.

His blood heated up in his veins now, just as it had then, as he looked between the two of them. The man on the floor and the woman staring down at him, worry etched on her face. _She still cares for him,_ an inner voice whispered, and something cold took shape in his stomach. Once again, they were together, and Severus was the stranger, looking in.

And then he froze. The green eyes were locked onto his, and something was pushing at his mind. In an instant he had recovered himself and blocked her. But he had almost stepped backwards in shock.

"Where did you learn to do that?" he hissed. Even the Dark Lord, the most accomplished Legilimens of the age, had never been able to penetrate Severus's defenses. Then again, Severus had never been particularly…emotionally vulnerable in front of him. Which was not the case now. Lily was no great Legilimens; even now she was putting a hand to her forehead, blinking from the strain. But she had caught him in the midst of a roiling cloud of emotion. Damnation. What had she seen?

"Just paying you back for what you did to me," she said faintly. "Impulse decision." She took her hand away slowly, frowning, as if disturbed by what she had seen.

_Now she's seen that I haven't changed,_ he thought bitterly. _I'm still the same pathetic…_ There his train of thought ended. He would not let it continue.

"I suggest you revive your husband and get home," he said. "As I said before, you wouldn't be comfortable at my house. Too many lunatics lurking about at the end of the alleyways and such. Probably not what you're used to." A slight sneer. "But I'm sure the Leaky Cauldron has no shortage of available rooms."

"Sev!" she cried, and her use of his old nickname stung him like nothing else she had said so far.

"Goodbye, Lily." He bit back everything he was dying to say—_don't be weak,_ he thought;_ don't be pathetic, don't let history repeat itself_—and walked away, as Lily looked helplessly from him to James and back again.

She couldn't just leave her husband lying on the floor to chase after Severus Snape. But he was wrong. As usual. He underestimated how much he really meant to her. But could she really blame him, after how she had treated him through the years? It wasn't a great surprise that he thought…whatever he thought.

The hem of his cloak whipped around the corner. She bit back a cry for him to wait, instead raising her wand and casting the spell that would enable Madam Pomfrey to find James. She didn't want to be here when he woke up, but she didn't particularly want him to be trampled by a crowd of third-years emerging from class. A glowing beacon of red light formed from the tip and traveled through the air, disappearing through a wall on its way to the hospital wing.

Then she gathered her cloak around her and hurried away.

* * *

She could still picture it in her mind: the winding streets, the dark brick walls, the boarded-over windows. She had gotten the image clear in her thoughts before she had even exited the grounds of Hogwarts. The moment she stepped beyond the boundaries of the school, she turned into space, into the crushing whirling blur of color and light and sound.

And landed on her knees in Spinner's End. She leapt to her feet, her ears ringing in the sudden silence. There was no one within sight. The day was drawing to a close faster than she had thought—the students at Hogwarts had probably been dismissed not to another class but to dinner. Already the sun had dropped low in the sky, casting a glow over the surrounding houses and turning the glass in the windows opaque and clouded, like blind eyes.

He had brought her here once before, when she was twelve, after she had insisted on seeing his home. For weeks afterward she had been able to tell that he regretted it. Spinner's End was as far from her cozy, white-picket-fence home she had shared with her sister and parents as anything she could imagine. It had been embarrassing for the both of them. Since that day she had never considered going back there, never dreamed that one day she would be chasing Severus down one of its twisting alleyways.

"Severus!" The name had just left her lips when she realized it might not be a good idea to start calling for him in this place. She inhaled sharply, as though she were trying to suck the sound back into her lungs.

There was a scuffling from behind her and she whirled, heart pounding, and it didn't slow down once she saw that it was only Severus and not some knife-wielding maniac. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "It's dangerous."

"You're here. I just followed you."

"Why, Lily." He was shaking his head, his cloak rippling in the slight wind as he walked towards her. The atmosphere and emptiness of the place made him look like a priest out of Plague England, walking the streets past houses full of the dead.

"Because I wanted to say something."

"What." Flat dull dead lifeless tone. Him barely looking at her.

'_You're never going to change'_ _he must be thinking_ _but I _can_ change I _have_ changed let me tell you and don't listen to what I say listen to the voice in which I say it_

"Look at me."

His eyes were pulled to hers smoothly and immediately, as if he did not want to meet her gaze but found himself helpless at her direction.

"I made a mistake in marrying James. I had no idea who I was then. Or who he was even. I thought he had changed. I thought he had become more mature, more thoughtful, more like someone I wish I were married to. More like…you." Once she had started talking she couldn't stop. "I've been running around trying to figure things out and every time I start talking like this I realize I'm just waiting for you to shut me up by kissing me like you did that one time because that's what makes me stop, isn't it, that's what makes me stop and think and makes all the confusion and rushing noise in my head just…go away. So it's just you and me again."

"Are you hinting at something?" Severus said, and she wasn't mistaken, that _was_ a slight smile on his face.

"I don't even think I need that now, though, to figure out something I should have realized a long time ago. That mistake I made right after graduation."

"We all made mistakes after grad—" Severus began, his arm stinging.

She stopped him, knowing what he was about to say, remembering Dumbledore's ringing words in the courtoom. No one would vouch for _her_, though, and the mistakes she had made. "I haven't done anything to repair it, though. I've just been fighting with James and sneaking around. I…I don't want to sneak around anymore." And then, before he could assume she meant she wanted to fix her marriage and leave him behind, she rushed on: "You're the only one I love. Not James."

"So this means…what?" He looked around him, at the crumbling bricks and dark stains on wood and the quickly darkening sky. "You can't mean you'd prefer to stay here."

"Would you want to stay here, though? I mean, I'm sure the Leaky Cauldron has no shortage of available rooms."

His eyebrows shot up. "You're not saying you'd want to stay in the Leaky Cauldron with me."

"Although, I'd be staying at Hogwarts next semester," he mused, almost to himself. "Albus was kind enough to offer me a job there."

"What position?" He had not shared this news during the Order meeting, Lily realized. As far as she knew, she was the first person to ask about it.

"Potions." The word brought back memories upon memories of hazy, perfumed classrooms, whispering with Severus underneath Professor Slughorn's droning voice. "He wisely chose not to offer me the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts…needs to keep up appearances, you see." There was a slight tinge of bitterness in his tone.

"Well, that's good," Lily said, hearing and hating the false cheer in her voice. "You were always brilliant at Potions. Better than any of the rest of us clowns."

"You weren't that bad."

"Because you were whispering instructions in my ear," she returned with a smile. "What, you don't remember?"

"I remember," Severus said after a second. "Did James ever find out, by the way?"

Lily's body tensed at the sound of her husband's name. "About you helping me with Potions?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Ah."

"What does it matter?"

"Nothing. Just something I was wondering." But he was smiling now. "And now I know that I'm still the only one who knows how bad you really are at Potions."

"Merlin's beard, Severus. If you're going to gloat…" But the slow, disturbing realization that something was wrong crept into Lily's mind, even as she was smiling and allowing that teasing lilt to enter her voice. Something connected to James, who was probably prone on a bed in the hospital wing right now while Madam Pomfrey tried to figure out what the hell had happened.

Severus noticed the change cross her face. He frowned and glanced down the alleyway as if he had heard someone there—but there was no one—and Lily realized that her hand had gone to the wand stashed in her pocket.

"He's not here," she said, not sure whether it was to Severus or herself.

"No," Severus replied, still looking at the entrance to the alley. "But he's not going to want to let you go."

* * *

A/N: Sorry this was sort of a short chapter, but I've been really overwhelmed with life and personal issues lately. But I promise I won't wait too long to update.


	11. Chapter 11

Lily crouched in her room, photographs slipping like weeds through her fingers. They were all of her and James. Slick smiles, shiny eyes, none of it real. None of it permanent; eventually the paper would crumble and fall apart, the figures in the frame blissfully unaware that they were now separated too, held in place by only a few fragile threads of paper.

She tensed at a sound from behind her—but it was only the wind, creaking past the trees. James was still at Hogwarts, of course, probably still unconscious. Quickly she stuffed the rest of the photographs into the box she had laid out before her, along with a wedding autograph book she had found stashed in a bookcase. There was barely enough room, as she had spent the last ten minutes shoving some of her other things—her wedding dress, presents James had gotten her—in there too.

Grunting slightly with the effort, she lifted the box and tripped down the stairs, praying she wouldn't fall and break her neck. Well, at least then she wouldn't have to confront James.

But she made it safely down to the ground floor, and so she would have to confront James. She set the box on the table and waited behind it, as though it would shield her somehow. She stood there and listened to the ticking clock on the mantle that seemed to count out each of her heartbeats, matching them with perfect, synchronized regularity.

* * *

Ironically enough, he arrived when she was in the bathroom. Lily had just emptied some soap into her palms—_at least he's not catching me with my pants round my ankles_—and the smell of honeysuckle flooded her nose, even as she fancied she could hear an intake of breath from the other room. She rinsed her hands, not wanting to go out there with goo all over them, biting her tongue. Every passing second would make what was about to come more and more uncomfortable.

_Just get it over with, Lily._

She'd rehearsed what she was going to say, in front of the mirror. She'd muttered to herself as she piled things into the box, raking her hands through her hair and trying to picture James's reaction—anger? Unbelief? Desperation, shock, all of them at once; she had pushed the images away, unable to concentrate with the roiling anxiety that they called up in her stomach.

She took a deep breath and pushed the bathroom door open. She entered the room, and though she was prepared to see James, she had not been expecting the tall brunette who was with him.

There were a few seconds of silence as the three of them looked back and forth at each other. Lily felt a strange absence of shock, as if she had been expecting rain and gotten a report of sleet instead. Rain, sleet; who cared? What was the difference, really?

"Lily," James finally said, as if he had never said the word before and was just trying it out. He pronounced it deliberately and loudly.

Lily was overcome by the urge to say "James" in the exact same tone (and wondered whether if she did, the strange brunette would say her own name), but managed to resist it. Instead she folded her arms and assumed the pose of a deeply disappointed housewife.

"James," she said, "what the fuck?"

It was as if he had been waiting for this. Immediately he switched into a stuttering, panicky explanation. "I didn't know you'd be home yet," he said, the words stumbling over each other. "I thought—you'd still be at the castle—"

"I thought _you_ were in the Hospital Wing," she said clearly. "Why aren't you there? Did you meet her there?" She indicated the woman with her chin. The brunette's eyes were widened and darting back and forth between her and James, and somewhere deep down Lily found herself hoping she didn't think Lily was going to pull out her wand and start hexing her. She actually felt calmer than she probably sounded. "I never thought the Hogwarts hospital wing was a place to pick up a date, but I guess I was wrong to overlook it. Was she in the next bed?"

"Lily—I—" He battled against something stuck in his throat for a minute. "I can explain—"

"Did you not go to the hospital wing, then?"

"I woke up before anyone got there," he muttered, almost ashamed. And still the brunette hadn't said anything. The ensuing silence, where Lily stared firmly at her and James stared firmly at the floor, was almost funny. Almost. Lily still felt that anxiety, and realized how ridiculous it had been. James was the one who was stuck in this situation. He was the wrongdoer. Not her.

"She's just a friend," James finally said.

_Oh god you said it I didn't actually think you'd say it_

"Oh, _James."_

He met her disappointed, almost amused gaze with a wavering and almost tearful one.

"Merlin's baggiest pants, but I thought you'd have enough guts to tell me the truth." As no change came over his face, as he didn't open his mouth to speak, her amusement changed suddenly to rage. "You could at least give me enough thought…enough respect…to tell me the truth." She indicated his face. "There's her lipstick on your cheek, for one thing."

James jerked as if he had been shocked.

"Don't bother to explain," she continued. "That's all the explanation I need." She hoped he couldn't see her hand shaking.

"What's this?" he asked after half a second. It took her a moment to realize he meant the box on the table.

"Oh, that." It seemed kind of feeble to say _Well I was going to leave you anyway._ But what else could she say? "Those are some items I thought I wouldn't need to take with me. Maybe you'll keep them, maybe she'll wear them, who knows." She looked like she might be able to fit into Lily's wedding dress pretty well. Maybe she would wear it.

"What—where—" James walked over to the box and began rifling through it. She fought back a glare at the sight of his hands on her dress, ruffling the fabric. It wasn't hers anymore. She didn't want it, didn't want anything smeared with his…essence.

"I'm leaving, James."

And finally he did look at her with comprehension, and it was as she had imagined. The brunette seemed to melt into the background, blur into the wood.

"Lily," he said. "Please. I can—"

"But I can't," she said, and took her coat from where it was hanging on the back of her chair. "I'm sorry, James, but you're an ass, and I'm leaving. I hope you two are happy together." It sounded to her ears like she was quoting from a script, but the words had the desired effect. James was staring after her, the brunette was still looking nervous, and with a dash of pleasure she noticed that James's hand was shaking. So she had caught him sober. He would remember this. And not come knocking on her door at two-thirty the following morning, hopefully…

Which would be pretty hard, considering she hadn't told him where she was going.

A place that was, at least for the moment, home.

* * *

Spinner's End was dark and quiet at night, and Lily could almost fool herself into thinking it was like any other street. Almost. The hush of darkness had settled into the alley like soot, coating it with a blanket of stillness, muffling the noise of the river and the sounds that came from the wind whistling around the brick walls.

"Don't you miss the house?" His fingers were tracing the side of her wrist, playing along the edge of the bone. "And the view of your nice suburban street?"

She didn't respond for a few moments. "Well," she said eventually, "my parents and sister and I went vacationing in Milan a few years ago. Our hotel was on the bank of a river. It was so beautiful. They had the most fabulous Italian ices downstairs. Petunia and I would go crazy for them. At night the stars would glisten on the water and throw moving light onto the ceiling. And you could see the mountains in the distance." They had risen above the city, she remembered, blank and tall and startling in their blackness. "The city lights would twinkle beyond the river. You could smell pasta and pizza and garlic for hours after sundown."

"So you're trying to tell me it was beautiful?"

"Hmmm. Yes. But I couldn't really sleep there. It was nice, but it wasn't quite home…" She could see the edge of his face, just barely reflected in a faint shaft of moonlight coming through the window. "When we came home the first night it was different. I had already grown tired of endless pasta and Italian ices and finally I felt much safer. Much more comfortable. And at last I could sleep."

She knew Severus was thinking of the insomnia she had endured for the past few months, which she had told him of, about how she could lie in bed for hours after James was asleep and only be able to stare at the darkness.

"Can you sleep here?" he asked.

She considered. Already that slow and peaceful stillness was creeping over her body and mind, a feeling that often eluded her when she was with James. Now the thought of sleep, rather than some lofty goal she could never reach, seemed utterly possible and delightful, as accessible as a warming cup of tea.

His fingers found her palm and began tracing something into the skin, and after a few seconds she realized what he was spelling out: L-I-L-Y. Her name.

"Yes," she said. "Now that I'm home."

THE END

* * *

A/N: Hope you enjoyed.


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